


Redemption (Part III)

by spnredemption



Series: Redemption Road [42]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-07
Updated: 2012-10-07
Packaged: 2017-11-15 22:01:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 37,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/532241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spnredemption/pseuds/spnredemption
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"This world turns like a knife in our wounds…"</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Redemption (Part III)

**Author's Note:**

> **Masterpost:** **[Supernatural: Redemption Road](http://spn-redemption.livejournal.com/1552.html)** (for full series info,  
>  warnings, and disclaimer)  
>  **Authors:** [](http://swordofmymouth.livejournal.com/profile)[**swordofmymouth**](http://swordofmymouth.livejournal.com/) and [](http://zatnikatel.livejournal.com/profile)[**zatnikatel**](http://zatnikatel.livejournal.com/)  
>  **Characters/Pairing:** Dean/Castiel, Sam, OC and canon characters  
>  **Rating:** NC-17  
>  **Wordcount:** ~29,000  
>  **Warnings:** language, violence, sexuality, references to noncon, scenes that some may perceive as dubcon  
>  **Betas** [](http://murron.livejournal.com/profile)[**murron**](http://murron.livejournal.com/)  
>  **Art:** Chapter banner by [](http://zatnikatel.livejournal.com/profile)[**zatnikatel**](http://zatnikatel.livejournal.com/) ; digital paintings by **[celectis](http://celectis.deviantart.com/)** , [](http://usarechan.livejournal.com/profile)[**usarechan**](http://usarechan.livejournal.com/), **[guusana](http://guusana.tumblr.com/)** , and [](http://anncros.livejournal.com/profile)[**anncros**](http://anncros.livejournal.com/), which you can also find **[here](http://spn-redemption.livejournal.com/50784.html)** , **[here](http://spn-redemption.livejournal.com/51088.html)** , **[here](http://spn-redemption.livejournal.com/50619.html)** , and **[here](http://spn-redemption.livejournal.com/51273.html)** (NB: art contains spoilers for the episode)

Running, always running, while he hurts, and coughs, and heaves for breath, and tastes blood in the back of his mouth. 

He aims for economy rather than style. Short, quick steps mean his feet spend less time in contact with the ground, and that matters because he's running on third-degree burns through fields of fire, after something that he wants to forget exists in the same dimension as him stole his boots one night while he huddled in his hiding place and let it have the damn things rather than have him, even if he knew his skin would melt without them. Three steps per second it is then, _slap-slap-slap_ , through the corpses and carnage of this wild frontier, eyes narrowed to slits by fierce and scorching headwinds and billowing dust storms. He does it along to _Enter Sandman_ over and over in his head, and it's so damn appropriate because he's back in Never-Never Land and sleeping with one eye open when he can slip into the shadows and find a safe crack in the earth.

But _it_ never rests, and _it_ has a long stride and keen senses. And so they go, endlessly, because journeys of a thousand, million, billion miles start with a single step, and he took that step when he bound himself to _it_.

He drifts off sometimes, remembers his brother when he was soulless; how Sam loped along like a wolf, strides eating up the ground, breath steady and not even a bead of sweat on his brow. Castiel runs like that too, but that memory and loss, loss of closeness, of whispering in the night and the feeling that nothing else mattered, is too much to bear so he tries not to think of it. Except when he does, and he presses his hand to his shoulder then, even if it disrupts him and sends his rhythm skewing into an ungainly stumble that threatens to poleaxe him.

Sometimes when he does it, he thinks he feels something.

_Dean…_

This dream is more real than most of them have been; there is skin pressed against his, a hand on his cheek.

He speaks, something he pulled out of his memory to comfort himself with right after he found himself lost here, something that still echoes in that small part of him that hasn't been charred to black by Hell's fire, that small part of him that is still a _poet at heart_ , although he knows his heart is turning colder and harder with each eternity that passes here. He twists his head when he says the words, so that his own mouth ghosts over the scar he wears. "Ego dilecto meo…et dilectus meus mihi…" he murmurs. "I love you. I miss you…so damn much, Cas. And I want you so badly."

And then there are soft lips moving against his, a faint reply eked out over long seconds because Castiel is still in that languid sleep-wake state Dean remembers, that loose sprawl of limbs that Dean would drape himself over and kiss his way along and across, up and down, until his lover sighed and shuddered his way to alert and needy.

"Te…amabo…in aeternum"

"I dreamed that I saw you…that you reached for me," Dean mumbles back, through a lazy smile. "I wish you were real."

There is a drowsy huff of air then, and the rumbled-out voice he will never hear again outside of his mind.

"'M real. Open your eyes."

But _fuck, no_ , Dean doesn't want to and isn't going to, isn't going to let go of this fraction of a second of peace and rest any sooner than he has to, because he _will_ have to and then he'll be on the move again. "Just talk to me," he whispers through his exhaustion.

A thumb moves back and forth under his eye, slow and gentle, and the lips are nuzzling and pulling at his now, warm, insistent but careful.

"I did reach for you."

The dream-Castiel hums then, and after a moment Dean hears his breathing level off to an authentic, deep in-out that signals slumber.

This feels real.

It's so warm where they are, a good warm, not the inferno he has been subsisting in, counting down the long seconds until he finally slips and falters.

He's lying on something soft, covered by something soft.

Castiel is long, and sleek, and _right there_ , and Dean pats out a hand, finds that Castiel's thigh feels as real under his palm as the rest of this dream, finds that when he runs his hand slowly up Castiel's back, the skin there is as smooth as it always was, and that when he mouths his way along Castiel's jaw the stubble is as scratchy as he remembers it. He inhales sweat, the faint scent of soap and antiseptic, because this dream-Castiel even smells real as he wraps his arm around Dean and curls into him, fitting his leg in between Dean's.

This feels real.

There is no scent of brimstone, no dust in his throat, no snap-crackle-pop of flames, no din of suffering and no screeching soundtrack of demons mocking him as he stumbles past.

The fatigue feels real, the deep, dull ache in his bones feels real, the pull of strained, overused muscles feels real.

There is a tickling sensation on his cheeks, liquid that tastes of salt when it meanders its way down to his lips, and it feels _real_ , as if Castiel is there and weeping in his arms.

Real, this feels _real-real-real_ , but it can't be.

"Are you real?" Dean whispers anyway, but there is just that steady inhale and exhale, and the rise and fall of Castiel's ribcage under his hand.

"He's real."

It's another voice Dean never expected to hear again, the words choked out and strained.

"Open your eyes, Dean. He's real. This is real."

Dean doesn't open his eyes. He pulls his hand up and out from under the covers, paddling it blindly in thin air until it is caught and held.

And then he looks, and _sees_ , and the tears he can taste are his own, not Castiel's at all, because Castiel is out of it, lashes snug-tight on his cheeks, mouth a little open. And his brother is there, sitting in a chair on the other side of the bed and leaning forward, white-faced with strain, his eyes red.

"This is real, Dean," Sam whispers. "You're safe."

Sam is gripping Dean's hand tight, and Dean grips back.

Restoration takes time and there is a sense that they are all running out of it. Yet, some things have to take their course, and healing is one of these things. 

According to Bobby's calendar, it's ten days since Sam hauled Dean out of his grave. All Dean can remember of the first few is sheer dissonance: snapshot flashbacks of talons flaying his chest open wide and a fiery tentacle melting his flesh, so that he screamed himself awake scrabbling at his skin even though he knew his wounds were gone. Then there were the long hours of mute trauma when he just lay there in the bed and stared at Castiel lying there next to him, while Castiel stared back and they held onto each other like they might never let go.

They mend slowly, an arduous slog of nightmares, nausea and neediness, shaking hands and weak legs, hearts sent leaping into throats by loud noises. But even so, this second week has been better, the aftermath and fallout interspersed with periods of testy _fuck-you-all_ normality during which the Sam-and-Bobby pincer-movement mother-hen act has driven Dean crazy, and he has wanted nothing more than to crank his baby into gear and sweep out through the gate of the lot to gank some soulless sonofabitch as viciously as he can. And he knows there are plenty of them out there, even if he has only half-focused as Bobby tells him again, slowly and patiently, about how Hell came to earth, how this new world works and what lives in it. Who has died in it too, and Dean couldn't find anything to say to that. He had pushed up silently and snagged the bottle of Jack from the pantry on his way back up to the bedroom, where he downed a third of the liquor while tears streamed down his cheeks and he cursed the irony of grieving a woman and child who died not even remembering who he was.

Castiel had found him there, had slid down the wall to sit next to him. "I think Amelia and Claire are dead too," he had said quietly. "Bobby told me they're fine, but he isn't a very good liar. I know it isn't the same. But."

Dean hadn't really known if it was the same or not, but he had listed and rested his head on Castiel's shoulder anyway. "This is my fault," he had whispered. "I didn't kill that thing when I should have." And Castiel had turned into him, wrapped him in his arms and hushed him, gripping him hard, as if Dean was the only solid thing in his world.

Dean has shrugged helplessly when Bobby asks him _what the hell happened?_

"Cas came for me," he has replied, and every time Bobby's face has fallen into a sort of harrowed bemusement.

"But he can't have," the old man has insisted, drifting off a little into his own doubt. "There was no gas in the car. It never moved, not one inch. The dogs started hollering five minutes after I walked past him to go milk the cow."

Sam believes it though, showed Dean the blood spattered page in Castiel's journal with a sort of reverence after Dean came around properly, pointing to the words and phrases that formed each step in the equation.

Then he had unfolded a small slip of paper that was as creased as Dean's own fortune had been, and read it aloud. "The trick to finding things you've lost is to look where you last saw them."

Beside Dean, Castiel had cleared his throat. "No, the trick is finding your faith," he had offered softly, and he had smiled at Sam's quizzical expression. "You had faith in me," he had elaborated in a tired murmur. "And faith in your brother. And faith in yourself. If you hadn't…"

Dean doesn't want to think about that, wants to push the vague recall of horrified scraping on wood and airless claustrophobia down as far as it will go and pour concrete on it to seal it there. And he has given up trying to work out the logistics of any of it; he only knows that Castiel came for him like he did before, and it makes him cling to his friend even more tightly in the dark, tying them both together in a twisting, looped double knot of arms and legs.

When he snaps awake on a stifled cry, he rouses Castiel and kisses him bruisingly hard, biting at his lips, sobs out incoherent bullshit as he rubs them together, because the desperate, feverish heat of sex, the trifecta of skin, sweat and semen, grounds him in reality even if it's uncoordinated and exhausted, and it peeters away into holding on for dear life, breathing his friend in.

"Prove you're really here," he pleads out harshly. "Prove that I'm alive."

And he hangs on Castiel's voice as Castiel tells him, _I'm here, Dean, I'm really here_ , and _you're alive, you're alive_ , on a continuous loop, until his throat is so raw the words are a hoarse scratch in Dean's ears.

He's really here.

He's alive.

No, healing can't be hurried.

And they all are healing, so Dean tries to be patient when Sam hovers at his elbow to prop him up when he isn't even wobbling, or falls asleep slumped on the chair in the corner of the bedroom because he stumbled in there at midnight, roused by screaming, and never made it back to his bed. And he tries to be patient when Bobby chides him for not eating enough and drinking far too much, and when the old man snaps at Castiel for every little thing even though he produces platefuls of baked zucchini for Castiel afterwards and his hands are as gentle as Dean has ever seen them when he tends to the angel's burns.

Auto work is another thing that can't be rushed, and Dean always has found a leisurely escape in drinking in some old junker, seeing what she once was and could be again in his mind's eye. And now he does it with even more of a quickening in his heart, as he walks around the scarred remains of the Impala, his hands stuffed deep into his hip pockets. The chill cuts through him like a blade, but he welcomes its sharp edge as he stands in the lot in the early dawn gray, because Hell was never cold, and the frigid air grounds him as much as his family does. He glances up at the window, smiles at the thought of Castiel still burrowed under the quilts, his hair a black tuft poking out from underneath the layers. He knows that if his friend or any of the others saw him out here shivering, they would have something suitably cutting to say about how he skulked out of bed before sunup and didn't fire up the stove and put the coffee on before he braced himself against the abrupt winter.

And now here he stands, gazing at his car. He has only seen her from a distance before this, has put off making this pilgrimage. Up close, her burned-out, trashed hulk looks like a monument from a bygone era, or maybe from the future. Dean doesn't know if it counts as a memory if it's something that hasn't happened and never will, but the words slip out of him almost unconsciously, before he can swallow them back.

"Oh no…baby, what did they do to you?"

He thinks he sees an arc of winter sunray hit the plane of the side panel, and there is a bright flare of light out of conjunction with physics, something that should not be. It vanishes in a line of pearlescence that gives Dean a trembling feeling inside, and he closes his hands into fists to stop them from shaking. He wants to growl and snarl at it, and it takes everything he can summon to stop himself from dropping to his knees, into a predatory crouch. Something of that Hell will always be with him; it has the persistence of a splinter that will not be prised from the skin. But repression keeps him intact like it always has, and he shoves the splinter down deep, buries it where it will not catch on anything, or recall him to pain.

He distracts himself by jotting down a mental list of auto parts that he will have to pilfer from the cars stacked in Bobby's salvage yard, as he surveys the damage. The door is missing from the driver's side, and in places the metal panels are burned through to nothing. She's on her rims, her tires in shreds, and her windows are all blown out. He suspects the ignition won't even cough if he turns the key.

"What happened to treating my baby right?" he grouches out loud to Bobby's dog, where it stands a few feet away. As if to answer the question, the mutt strolls up and cocks its leg, delivering a spatter of rank, steaming piss onto the back left rim, before it flops down and contorts itself into a suitable position for licking its balls, which it does with gusto. "Fuckin' charming," Dean tells it, and it grins toothily at him.

He slants his eyes over towards the auto shop, sighs as he thinks of the saber saw, the plasma cutter, the welder, the paint gun. Without power running out to the shop, he's doing this the hard way, and maybe not even at all. He lays a hand across the bubbled paint of the trunk, and he can feel in the way the cover bounces beneath his fingers that the lock is broken. When he withdraws his hand, the trunk opens up like a mouth, and he blinks, has to shake his head at the split-second flash of yawning jaws gaping wide to swallow him.

No.

 _No_.

The ground is frozen hard beneath his boots, and the air is icy, and his family is here and this is the world, the _world_. "This is not the Pit," Dean croaks, and when he feels Cheney's wet nose poke into his hand he pats the dog almost frantically as it leans into him and nuzzles his leg.

He breathes it down, even counts backwards from twenty like Sam sometimes still does, lips silently forming the numbers while his fingers close around the shape of the amulet his brother returned to him again with the wry comment that _it better be the last time we do this_. It works for now, and Dean turns his attention back to the trunk. It looks like a munitions factory vomited into it; the ordnance he inherited from his father and has steadily added to over the years is in disarray, a haphazard pile of revolvers, shotguns, knives of all sizes, silver swords scavenged from dead angels, shells, grenades, boxes of ammo. The disorganization bothers the military training ingrained in him, a mark of John's legacy.

But what really stands out are the flat metal plates piled toward the back, and Dean leans over to snag one for a closer look. In the darkness at the rear of the trunk it looks like silver, but somehow he knows it's more than silver, and there's a strange glow he can't place when his fingers brush the burnished finish—

"Dean."

Dean startles with a cry, and hits his head on the trunk lid. His heart ping-pongs in his chest like a cheap arcade game and he slams the trunk closed as he whirls, sitting on it to keep it closed against the broken lock. The metal paints a stripe of frozen cold that seeps through his jeans to his ass.

Castiel is standing there with a mug of coffee in either hand, and a drape of dark fabric hanging over the crook of his arm. Dean waits for the scolding and the quiet _you shouldn't be out here, not by yourself_ , but Castiel offers him nothing more than gentle eyes as Dean rubs at the sore spot on the back of his head and takes the cup his friend is holding out to him.

It's too hot.

Dean should have realized, because Hell is like a deep tissue burn and you can feel it afterwards, the steady throb beneath the skin. It makes hot objects hotter, and his fingers scorch through to the bone. He drops the cup, and they both watch without a sound as it falls to the frozen ice underfoot and shatters in several pieces, dashing hot liquid across Cheney's leg, forcing a yelp and a flinch from the mutt. Dean knows how it feels.

After a moment of staring at the coffee as it melts the ice into a brown puddle, Castiel offers Dean his cup instead, holding it out into the empty space like the broken mug is nothing in this landscape of broken things and he will always hold out something whole and perfect for Dean to fuck up, over and over. Dean doesn't want it but he takes it anyway, and this time he does it smart, gripping it by the top until Castiel lets go of the handle.

"Thank you," Dean croaks. He isn't talking about the coffee.

They stand in silence then, as the dawn starts creeping over the horizon and the snow goes from blue to pink, until Cheney breaks the quiet, licking the cold coffee off the ice with a thick lapping sound. The screen door bangs in the distance at almost the same time, and Dean glances towards the house to see Meg stretching out her morning kinks, oblivious to them lurking behind the car, before she cups her hand to her face and foggy gray wisps start wreathing up.

Dean can smell the acrid stench of the cigarette already. "The house stinks of smoke," he sidetracks morosely. "It burns my eyes."

He finds he's shivering, hugging himself, and without saying anything Castiel tugs the fabric from his arm and holds it out to him. Dean recognizes it even though he has never seen it before: an olive drab M-65 military field jacket. He knows it because it was the field jacket of choice during the Vietnam war, and he saw his old man wear one just like it enough times to remember.

He also recognizes it from 2014.

With a weak smile, he manages a joke about it. "Hey, future-me wore one of those." He jerks his head at the wreck that was once his car. "Had one of these rusting out in his lot too."

Castiel looks at him, his eyes liquid. "It was hanging on the hallstand," he says. "I assumed it was Bobby's. It'll keep you warm."

It might well be the old man's even if Dean can't recall ever seeing Bobby wear it: after all he was in-country too. And Dean knows his friend is right; the henley he's wearing is useless for insulating him against the cold. No point in being superstitious; he relents with a grudging huff, pulls on the extra layer. There are thousands of jackets like this still in circulation, and in the end, it doesn't mean anything. It fits right through the shoulders, and it's still warm where Castiel kept it close, but for all that, Dean can't seem to stop shivering even with the inner zip pulled up and all the buttons fastened. He wraps his arms around his chest again and remains poised there, one boot on the ice beneath the car and the other kicked up on the bumper while he eases on the car's backside and tries to focus on what he was doing before Castiel said his name. "Hey, when you came back…did you bring your armor with you?"

Castiel frowns. "No. I left it with Balthazar. At least I think I did." He sighs then. "I'm afraid my recall is a little murky still. I wish I could remember more."

Dean feels a twinge and a tug at the base of his skull, like a ghost poking a finger into his brain matter. It awakens his own foggy memories, memories viewed through a veil of brimstone that turns the winter world around them surreal and hazy with light and endless white drifts of ash. When Dean blinks, it becomes brighter still and he hears voices penetrate from another world—

_—"Will he be alright?"_

_When Dean turns to look, Castiel is backlit by hellfire that casts his armor fiery orange and renders him a strange mixture of terrifying and glorious, so that Dean wonders what it might have been like to look up and see him leading legions of Heaven's warriors as they dove into the fray. He is staring right at Dean, his eyes like methane, as Vassago, his teeth exposed through his cheek in a relentless grin that he has no control over, unbuckles his breastplate._

_As Vassago collects Castiel's armor from him, Dean returns the angel's gaze, looking on Castiel's face with only a dim understanding of what it means to him. He feels base instincts of possession, and want, and need; looking at Castiel fills him with a thousand sensations, and they all make him feel undeserving and smaller than he should be, so he switches to stare behind Castiel, at Balthazar._

_The other angel's eyes are bright and elated even though his face is lit with cuts that leak silvery grace. He's talking in Enochian, and twice Dean hears his name as he blinks in his stupor. And then Balthazar and Castiel are embracing, chest to chest and hands slapping against their backs, as Vassago nods approvingly._

_Dean can feel the twisting burn mark the beast lashed him with curl up and down his torso like a living snake that nips at his skin. He's uncomfortable and hurting, shock is setting in, and he can feel the tremors start to rock his frame as—_

—"You're shivering, Dean," Castiel cuts in.

Dean startles as he wakens to himself through spliced-in memories occurring in Hell-time; and this is how it has been these past ten days – pieces of a shadow life coming back to him in dribs and drabs. He spills hot coffee on his hand, and it burns more than it should. He bites his lower lip and he can't stop shaking even after he can no longer hear Balthazar and Castiel, or hear the clink of them shedding their armor. He knows Balthazar said something about returning to Heaven, made some sardonic quip about his dictatorship being a benevolent one, but he can't seem to remember where Gabriel ended up, or when exactly he disappeared without explanation.

"Oh," Castiel realizes. "It happened again?"

He reaches forward and plucks the coffee cup out of Dean's hand. Dean lets him without asking why, and Castiel sets it on the ground, where Cheney rams his snout into it eagerly until he knocks it over and begins to lick that spillage up as well.

"You're still cold," Castiel adds, and then he tilts his head the way he used to, that unspoken angel-language of his, softened now by the humanity in his eyes. "Are you alright, Dean?"

Dean's teeth are chattering, but, "I'm good," he evades. "It just comes and goes. I'm like a woman with menopause, y'know? Hot one minute, cold the next. Go ahead, make fun of it."

"That wasn't my intention," Castiel replies, and he puts a hand on the trunk, leaning into Dean. There can be no mistaking his intention now, it's clear in the way his eyes have lit up with a sudden, unexpected gleam.

Dean feels his throat grow tight and warm, flush with new blood; the excitement of Castiel bending over him and capturing him against the rough surface of the destroyed Impala is both predatory and intense and he doesn't want Castiel to know just yet that he has no real physical need for his warmth. "What are you going to do about it?" he challenges instead.

Castiel wastes no time, and his boots crunch on the ice as he moves in to nudge against Dean's legs, bold now. The tentative lover is gone; this is the angel-soldier come to claim the spoils of his war, like he did on Tu'ugamau Island, and he grips Dean by one knee to open him up and invade his personal space so they are interlocked like puzzle pieces. A sharp wind whips around the corner of the house almost at the same moment, and it's like being slapped against the back of the neck. Dean shivers for real, and Castiel smiles as he leans in closer.

"Keep you warm is what I'm going to do about it," Castiel answers finally, and even if his voice is flat enough to make Dean wonder if he's serious, the rough gravel undercurrent to it might mean that he's insinuating more. _Well, he has to be_ , thinks Dean. _There's no way a guy gets between your legs because he's being literal about trading body heat_. But that's the thing with Castiel, he acknowledges inwardly. Sometimes, he _is_ that literal.

"Well," Dean prompts, "maybe it's not as easy as you think."

"It's my understanding that persistent shivering indicates a low-level stage of hypothermia," Castiel responds smoothly. "As do fumbling hands. Your shivering mechanism is your body's own attempt to reheat your core. In extreme instances, if this fails to work, simple body-to-body rewarming may yield a faster recovery."

Dean swallows. "Oh yeah?"

He slides a hand up to the top button of the M-65, and this is going to be cold and he will regret it later, but there is something tantalizingly forbidden about doing it out here, in the early dawn. He knows Meg can't see them, knows they have maybe a half-hour before Bobby drags his ass out of bed. Everything is silent and still, and sleeping, and no one, _no one_ will know about this except them. The privacy in the ice and the snow is what does it, this quiet wasteland that is just theirs, somewhere only they know, just like the waterfall cave they made love in. He thinks suddenly that he has craved that somewhere inside him for years, since Castiel walked in his dreams and found him alone and fishing.

He unfastens one button after the other and Castiel's eyes find the motion and lock in on it. A little breath of steam escapes the angel's lips as they part slightly, and it puffs into the air and dissipates. And then Dean is raking his hand over the frigid buttons faster, so they make a sound like tearing, and when he reaches for the zipper of the military drab, Castiel reacts blindingly fast, shoving him further up onto the trunk and knocking his hands out of the way to get to the tab and yank it down.

"I don't think stripping me naked is going to cure my hypothermia," Dean points out, and he wants to smirk and be sarcastic but the situation goes explosive in the space of seconds. This has always been the nature of their animal heat, like exposed fuel just waiting to combust and igniting from the dimmest spark, and Dean feels the kneejerk flash of desire snap through him so hard his abdomen tightens and those steadily heating muscles in his groin clench.

He helps to heave himself further onto the car, and Castiel is already chasing him up the slope of the vehicle's back-end, bracing one knee on the trunk to climb up after him. The struts are long-gone, and the Impala dips and bounces with the added weight, like a seesaw. Castiel's eyes are starving for this now, and Dean suddenly feels like he is nothing more than prey, being hunted by a whole pack of wolves, and that this is the split-second before the alpha-male leaps and fastens its jaws around his throat to pin him down.

"But stripping you naked means I can apply heat directly to your core…"

Even Castiel's answer is a breathy growl he cannot fit in the parameters of jest, and when he yanks the jacket zipper all the way open he doesn't stop there, but continues down a natural line of descent to the next zipper available, at the fly of Dean's jeans. It all happens in a quick succession, leaving Dean reeling with the change in temperature as the gaping jacket opens his torso up to a bitter breeze made even colder by the fact all his blood is presently flowing south, straight to the hard heaviness of his straining cock. It nips eagerly at the underside of the zipper until Castiel lets it burst free as if it's spring-loaded.

"Jeez, Cas—"

Castiel still doesn't wait, and all the while Dean is thinking _not really, you know_ , out here, _dude_ , where anyone can just come out onto the porch and see them like this. But if Dean's newly discovered concern is at all important, Castiel doesn't share it, because he's slapping a hand over Dean's mouth, and the next thing Dean feels is the hot warmth of the angel's lips closing in over the head of his cock.

The next sounds Dean makes aren't words, as he leans back and feels the violent tug of his jeans down his hips to make room for Castiel as he eats his way through Dean's flesh with no decorum, a satisfied hum vibrating at the back of his throat as he takes Dean's length along his tongue. When Dean vaguely hears the sound of the screen door slam up at the house he retains enough presence of mind to hope it's Meg abandoning her half-finished cigarette in favor of the relative warmth of the house, but part of him doesn't care. The rhythm of Castiel's tongue on his cock is sending him into a lull and all the building anxiety of the flashbacks that visit him in unexpected moments is gone now. He is lost in Castiel's mouth, and the way the angel looks with his eyes closed and his hair wild, and his face buried in Dean, nose to Dean's belly and lips slicking him to the root as he reaches to hold Dean there with a hand clamped around his thigh and the other slapping frantically at the Impala for purchase.

A flash of light erupts and pops beneath Castiel's fingers like a firecracker.

Castiel cries out, flinches and bucks so violently Dean thinks his friend is damn lucky he just happened to be gripping the collar of his shirt in his fist already, or Castiel would have cracked his skull open on the ice as he falls back, dragging Dean with him until they crash to the ground in an ungainly tangle. Dean is left cold and unfinished, his bare ass sliding on ice, but even as he hisses and flexes up onto his knees to tug his shorts and jeans back up, his main concern is Castiel's sudden reaction and how he holds his hand in a fist, as though he just touched the surface of a hot stove.

"Is it Hell?" Dean asks, because he knows Hell; Hell is something he can understand and offer comfort for. But Castiel doesn't answer, and now he is the one shivering and staring at nothing, his sudden catatonia in utter contrast to his lust-blown pupils and lips swollen from blowing Dean with abandon seconds before.

Dean shakes his friend by the shoulders to snap him out of it. "Cas. What is it? Talk to me, goddammit. You've gone all T-2000 on me."

Castiel breathes hard, and then one hand comes up to grip Dean's, but he doesn't look at Dean; he looks past him, at the Impala, as though he fears she will rev and roar into life and run them down until her wheel rims track their blood over the ice.

"It's grace," Castiel breathes. "Dean…she has grace in her. I thought I imagined it, that I was going mad."

Castiel shakes Dean off, frowning as he rises, Dean pushing up beside him until they're standing together, shoulder to shoulder. Dean zips his jeans and tries not to think about the uncomfortable bulge down there, but Castiel just stares at the car for a moment before stepping forward, studying her a little dubiously as he circles around her to her front. He holds out a hand, hesitates before he takes the plunge and sets his fingers over the destroyed finish of her hood.

"Of course," he whispers, his eyes going wide. "Michael. Michael, he…"

Abruptly, Castiel brings a fist across the sheet metal and cries out again with his head bowed and his other hand streaking up to slam over his head. Dean skids on the ice in his sheer fright, grabs his friend by the sleeve, turning him around and pulling him in close. The wind is cold and each time Dean breathes in it hurts from the inside out, but he doles out reassurance interspersed with questions. "It's okay. Cas. It's okay. What is this? I got you, buddy, I'm here. But what are you talking about Michael for? He's down in the Cage weaving baskets with Lucy."

"No, this was before the Cage," Castiel breathes, his features creased in some mix of awe and agony. "I lay here, right here on this car, and…" He pauses a beat, as realization seeps into his expression. "It was when we went back to stop Anna. Michael must have wiped my memory clean. I only have – glimpses. Impressions. But I knew there was something there. There's no way she could have made it through the Lake of Fire, not without some measure of angelic, divine assistance."

Dean blanches. "Are you telling me my baby is hopped on angel-juice?"

Castiel's mouth moves a moment as though he is scrambling through discordant thoughts, giving organization to chaos, and his eyes light up fierce, cobalt. "A measure of my grace," he marvels. "Michael exorcised me…or he started to. Right here, and I remember clinging to the metal, remember my grace melting into it. It must have been here all along, sleeping. Of course, you wouldn't have known it. But the influence was there…you would have noticed it, in small ways. Maybe narrowly missing an accident, or having an accident in which the harmful effect was lessened—"

"There was that time one of Yellow Eyes' drones plowed a truck into us," Dean cuts in, and he's caught for a moment in the _between_ , the memory of wandering hospital hallways with a reaper on his tail, trying to communicate with his brother. His dad's deal too, and his voice is a little dry when he goes on. "We all got banged up bad."

Castiel's reply is soft, like he knows where Dean's recall ended up. "Without the _angel-juice_ , as you so delicately put it, perhaps none of you would have made it."

Dean can't help his amazed huff. "Christ, you mean all these years, every time we took the car out for a spin, it was like – watching out for us?"

"Not quite," Castiel corrects him. "More like a lucky rabbit's foot."

That's a whole different story, and the tangent makes Dean scowl. "Dude, those aren't so lucky. This one time—"

Castiel sighs. "No, not like _that_ lucky rabbit's foot. Like a talisman, a sacred relic. She has been imbued with angelic grace all this time, and exerting a powerful influence."

"Huh. Maybe that's why it keeps such great MPG for being an old clunker."

Castiel ignores this last and studies his hand, opening and closing his fingers where he touched the car. "We were connected, for a moment. Fragments of the memory came back, but…"

"What?" Dean prods.

"I'm just thinking about what will happen when I lose all the grace I have left," Castiel murmurs. "Anael tore hers out and chose a tree to harbor it, but what's left of mine seeps away like dregs into the soil." He laughs and it's tinged with a hint of hysteria. "Maybe this car is as good a memorial as any other." He winces again, his face draining of any remaining color as he scrunches his eyes closed and rubs at his temple. "My head," he whispers. "It's extremely painful."

Dean finds he's reaching out to snag Castiel by the sleeve and start him moving. "Bobby's got stuff for that," he soothes. "Stuff that'll nuke it out of existence, help you sleep too."

He thinks that when they get into the house he'll scour the cabinets. He's got a hiding spot in the pantry where he likes to keep a tin of Hershey's cocoa, and he'll make a mug for Castiel if Bobby didn't find his stash in the months they were gone. But as they head back in, past the charred butts Meg left behind in a clump of dirty snow, Dean glances back at the ramshackle remains of the Impala and thinks her corpse looks eerily like the one he found dumped and overgrown by the tall grass in 2014.

Two weeks later, and the sun rises and sets, and though the weather remains frigid Dean can sense the sun lasting a little longer, the hint of sap beginning to run back through the trees; all of life waiting to burst forth.

Except for human life, that is. That seems to be in short supply. Not that there ever were a lot of people this far out from the center of Sioux Falls, but these days the silence and sheer emptiness is even more weighted than before, when there was at least the distant drone of a plane overhead, or passing traffic on the road signaled the presence of others. Now all of that has disappeared, as though overnight.

Dean wakes most mornings to Castiel wrapped around him or setting a steaming mug of coffee down on the nightstand and crawling back under the blankets to pull Dean close. But some mornings, light falling across his face disturbs him and he cracks his eyes to see his friend pulling the drapes to one side and gazing out the window. He hasn't asked if Castiel is staring at the Impala or the gravesite.

This morning is one of those mornings, and Castiel is drinking his own coffee, buck-naked as he stands in front of the windowsill and surveys the junkyard below. Sunlight frames him and sets the yellow paintwork aglow, and as usual he has no shame or shyness in his nakedness. Dean runs his eyes up and down him, takes a moment to admire the curve of his back and the swell of his ass, the muscles of his thighs, the way his calf muscles chisel out from his lower legs into the backs of his knees, the hair that downs the skin. And, _mine_ , Dean thinks, with a smug satisfaction he would never admit to.

He can hear sounds of the others downstairs, cautious chatter, Meg's higher-pitched tone, and Mira's following it, Bobby's low growl, the unmistakable sound of Sam asking a question or discussing strategy.

 _Things he should be doing_ , Dean thinks. Strategizing. Leading.

But he isn't ready.

He feels listless, aimless, feels as if he has been set down in some uncharted wilderness without a compass. He still shivers in the cold, and the lukewarm water he showers in when Bobby cranks up the generator still feels like burning, so much so that Castiel has to check the temperature for him before he steps under the flow.

He still dreams of Hell, but held secure in Castiel's arms he blinks himself blearily awake now instead of jack-knifing alert with a shriek. It's the usual ritual of post-traumatic stress disorder and it's like before, the initial sheer-horror dreams fading while the more subtle things stay for the long term. And what disturbs Dean the most now aren't the formless nightmares but the lucid dreams he has of holding Michael's sword, and the fire that streaks from the tip of the blade through the hilt, to light up his arm as far as the shoulder. Sometimes when he wakes from what he supposes must be a memory, he holds his hand up to the window, where the moon comes through fat and bright, and he flexes his fingers as though he holds the weapon still. Or maybe he just wants to, wants to find that moment of triumph wherever it is buried in his mind, so that it all doesn't feel like defeat, and failure, and _running_.

"Do you remember it?" he asks softly, without even really meaning to.

Castiel glances over his shoulder, one eyebrow raised in a question.

"When I ended the Beast," Dean elaborates. "Sometimes I think that if I could remember more, remember all of it, it might…I don't know. Make a difference."

"Make this seem more like victory," Castiel answers, and he sighs. "I don't remember. I don't remember much of anything really, except for the fact that I went there. I see flashes, but not many details. Perhaps it's because I'm near-human now. The human mind protects itself. Hides things." His expression goes faraway for a moment then, his brow furrowing as if he's trying to find it himself, in his own memory. "It was wondrous," he says, and then his focus snaps back to Dean and he shrugs ruefully. "Well. I'm sure it was."

He takes a mouthful of his coffee, walks back to set his mug on the nightstand. He slides himself back under the covers then, and Dean folds him into a sweat-sticky cocoon of arms and legs, one hand across the knobs of Castiel's spine and his friend's chilled flesh pressing to his own heated skin.

Castiel nuzzles his way along the line of Dean's jaw, and his eyes are soft as he gazes down at Dean. "Sometimes I can't believe you're real," he murmurs, as he leans in.

Dean tilts his head back and bares his throat, and Castiel's kisses are soft, but his cock is hard as he pushes it into Dean's thigh, groaning low into Dean's ear as Dean angles his hips up. It's slow and delicious, makes Dean think how easily he could whisper that he wants his friend moving inside him instead of against him, but even with the memory of Castiel buried deep and coming undone in his arms, there is no real intent. There is just the need to be held and treasured, the feel of Castiel's heart beating against Dean's chest, the angel's lazy thrusts fading away to pliant weight that slumps on Dean. Lips brush, and pull, and worry at each other languidly, opening up for the warm, wet twist and curl of tongues, long unhurried moments, until Castiel pulls away and nips his way down to Dean's shoulder, rests his face there for a minute before rolling over and up.

"You should get some more sleep while you can," he says as he stands and reaches for his coffee again.

Dean grunts a negative, rising up out of the sheets himself. "I'm tired of sleeping," he responds, and swings his legs off the bed. As his feet make contact with the cold surface, a fist pounds at the door, rattling it on its hinges.

"You lovebirds decent in there?" Bobby asks.

"Uh, no," Dean is quick to point out, but Castiel only raises a single eyebrow, unruffled by the proposition of someone else intruding. As unruffled as the sly bastard was when he had his fingers up Dean's ass the last time Bobby snuck up on them, Dean recalls, and his cock gives a pleased twitch at the memory. "We aren't—"

Too late, Bobby has spent the last thirty seconds deliberating and deciding behind the relative safety of the door, and the knob turns as it opens.

"What the hell, Bobby," Dean protests, pulling a corner of the sheet over himself.

Bobby's face is puffy with sleep and he's wearing the same flannel from yesterday, like they all are doing – recycling clothes to save on water and the labor of doing laundry in freezing South Dakota. They all smell on the ripe side some days, but Dean can't say he minds skipping showers, because it gives him time to forget the heat of burning.

"You haven't got nothing I don't already have, boy," Bobby says, and then stops when he considers Castiel, wearing a coffee mug and nothing else. Dean has to give the old man credit – he recovers with only a second's hesitation before he turns back to Dean.

"Car batteries, boy. We need 'em. I'd ask your brother, but he says he has a headache and Mira packed him away to bed to sleep it off."

Dean leers. "I'll bet she did." Then, "Batteries?" he queries. "Science project?"

"No, I like the way they set off the window treatments in the dining room," Bobby snipes back. "What do you think? We're getting scruffy around here and I got hair clippers that need juice, to say nothing of the radio I'd like to recharge—"

"It's okay, Bobby," Dean assures him, "I won't spill the beans on the cappuccino maker you have hidden away in the bunker."

Bobby holds up a finger. "That's not funny. Meg can smell it from the second floor, and I think she's onto me."

Dean winks and Bobby backs out and shuts the door. Dean looks back to where Castiel has a t-shirt in each hand, sniffing one after the other and frowning as he debates his choice, and sure, Dean could use the spare minutes between now and when Bobby expects them outside to seduce his friend back into bed for a swift blowjob, and maybe more than that. He thinks on it, the burn of Castiel as he pushed in, the thickness, the feeling of being filled, and it makes him shiver.

He had felt _safe_ in that moment, the safest he has ever felt.

He loses himself for a while considering that, while Castiel pulls on a pair of old faded jeans, and sits on the end of the bed to tug his socks on.

When his friend pads out of the room, Dean doesn't stop him.

Meg flicks her cigarette butt at one of the dogs lounging on the porch.

Dean focuses on her for a moment as he lifts his mug to his lips for a gulp of coffee, ponders that he still can't wrap his head around how or why she's still here, not that he has really tried to so far. He wipes his mouth, sets the mug on the back end of a junked Geo Prism that saw better days back when Mulder and Scully were still looking for the truth. "Hey Cas, do you think—"

"Your Kurt Vonnegut reminds me of my Father."

That pulls Dean up, and he half-turns towards the mashed-up Tacoma truckbed where Castiel is sitting, absorbed in a battered paperback from Bobby's library. "How's that?" he asks.

The angel doesn't look up as he goes on. "He says here, be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them in order that the reader may see what they are made of." He grimaces. "I believe my Father may have been strongly influenced by this advice."

 _You're fuckin' adorable, you know that?_ Dean thinks, but he manages to rein it back to an eye-roll as his attention returns to the ex-demon. "Do you think she's kosher?" he asks, propping open the hood of a Chevy K1500 while he tries to ignore the fact its chrome grille looks like teeth.

Castiel does glance up from the book at that, and he blinks at Dean owlishly. "Excuse me?"

Dean tees it up again. "Meg. You think she's kosher?"

Castiel's expression goes puzzled. "You're asking me if she has been prepared for consumption according to Jewish dietary laws?"

"You're fuckin' adorable, you know that?" It slips out of Dean before he can help it this time, but he twists in mid-air and lands on his feet, going on swiftly. "No, I am not asking you that, moron. I mean, do you think she's for real? Genuine? That we can trust her?"

Castiel tracks Dean's gaze, frowns as he eyes the woman. "She told me about the Hellgate in Colt's cemetery," he throws out there offhandedly, and Dean swivels his head back around under cover of the Chevy's hood and gapes, because it's news to him.

"She told you how to get into Hell to find me?"

His friend shrugs. "Well. Not exactly. I knew the gate was there – the prophet spoke of it in the Winchester Gospels. But it hadn't occurred to me to use it. She planted the seed with something she said. Inadvertently, but even so." He looks back to Dean. "She's human, Dean…"

The _but_ is waiting right there for Dean to hook it and reel it in, so he does just that. "But?"

"It's the fact she's still _Meg_ , not the host," Castiel concedes thoughtfully. "She's human, but she came from something demonic, and she's soulless. There's no precedent for her, and—"

"There is," Dean snaps, suddenly belligerent because he's thinking of the _precedent_ right now, with the hollow, sickly feeling he always gets when he remembers. "And Crowley said he would have sold me for a buck to buy soda."

Castiel's face falls as he makes the connection. "I feel regret about your brother, Dean," he says faintly. "And I'm sorry, more sorry than I can ever adequately express. But – Sam wasn't a demon before that happened."

Dean curls his lip up, and he knows his voice is undercut with accusation. "Soulless demon, soulless human. Same fuckin' difference."

There's a long, dragged-out silence then, made unwieldy by history, by good intentions gone wrong, and by mistakes; and all the while guilt shadows Castiel's eyes, along with something else Dean can't put a finger on until his friend lowers his gaze. "I'm falling, Dean," he says. "Hell sapped my grace even further. And when my fall is complete, I will be a soulless human."

 _Fuck_ , and regret stabs through Dean. "Cas, I'm sor—"

"No." Castiel's gaze switches to unnervingly intense even for him, and he shakes his head vehemently, his voice cracking a little. "You don't say sorry to me." He scrubs a hand through his hair, takes a few seconds to calm down.

Even if his friend doesn't want him saying the word itself, Dean persists. "When you fall, you'll be a fallen angel, Cas, like you were before Stull. Not a soulless human. Okay?"

Castiel sighs. He doesn't acknowledge Dean's assertion, backtracks the conversation instead. "Anyway. I was going to say that perhaps there is a risk her real nature could just be lying dormant…"

And there it is again, that unspoken doubt, and Dean hisses out between his teeth as he leans into the engine and knocks the green crust away from the battery with the ends of his pliers so he can begin to pry the connections apart. He flicks up a baleful stare. "You're butting me again aren't you?"

After meeting Dean's gaze again and lifting an eyebrow, Castiel repeats, " _But_ for now, she's human. I can't see any trace of the demon behind her face, and it may indeed truly be dead. So…"

Dean leans into his hand for a second, kneads his temple. "If we dump her out in the middle of nowhere, we could be serving a defenseless human being up as monster chow. Dammit."

Castiel smiles at that, and the tension suddenly drains away. "I don't know if she'll ever be defenseless."

Dean hasn't had much to do with Meg since he came back, has avoided her if he's honest. Bobby has told him what precautions they're taking, along with all the other _world-in-the-shitter_ stuff, and Meg hasn't bothered him save for a curt nod and a displeased look if she happens to pass by. As he leans in to pull the battery out like a lego piece and then set it down at the foot of the vehicle, he ponders what his friend said. "We know the tattoo can keep demons out, but do you think it could keep the demon down if it was still inside her?"

Castiel's eyes narrow. "That's an interesting point for debate."

Dean grins despite himself. "Understatement much?" He falls serious again then, as his eyes fall on the beat-up Dodge Tradesman Bobby has been stocking with canned goods, and its companion trailer, laden with tanks of gasoline. He thinks of the old man's plan, of how it could all go horrifically wrong with a cuckoo in the nest. "You know Bobby's talking about us pulling out of here, heading up to this hunter camp in Montana?" He ventures, and at Castiel's nod, he goes on. "It's risky taking Meg along for the ride if there's a chance she could turn. She could bring fuck knows what right to us." He reaches for his mug, takes another mouthful of his coffee, and makes his next point carefully. "I think maybe it's too risky."

Castiel's response is perfectly neutral. "Whatever you decide, I'm with you."

It's on the tip of Dean's tongue to say that he'd be more than happy for his friend to make the decision for him, as he watches Meg light up her second cancer stick. She stamps her boots on the wood to warm her feet, hacks out an impressive coughing fit, and hoiks phlegm into the dirt, and Dean studies her, tries to see a demon instead of a skinny, too-pale young woman who has been where he has, done what he has, survived like he has. "Smoking and drinking," he snipes. "Seems like all she does. As well as look down her nose at us."

Castiel is unfazed by the tangent. "Oh, she'll feel better soon," he confides. " I put saran wrap on the toilet for her."

Dean knows he doubletakes. "What?"

"Saran wrap," Castiel repeats patiently. "You know, clear plastic, it keeps food fresh—"

"Yeah, I know what saran wrap is, I'm just trying to figure out why you think putting saran wrap on the toilet is a good thing."

"Mira said it's a Bosnian folk remedy for people in a bad mood, and that it would perk Meg right up."

Dean stifles a laugh with his hand, and _fuck_ , he needs to laugh. He thinks he'll have to tell Castiel at some point that clear saran wrap over a toilet bowl is an invitation to an ass-kicking Stateside, but for the time being he amuses himself with the thought of Meg squatting and getting a hell of a surprise from down under. In the frigid cold, no less.

"Why are you laughing?" Castiel inquires mildly. "Did I do something wrong?"

"No." Dean waves it off and bites his lower lip to keep from smiling, before getting his head back in the game. He turns to Castiel and hands him the pliers. "Tackle the next one?"

Castiel takes the pliers and looks around the sea of rusting car hoods as though he's surveying an orchard in the interest of picking ripe fruit. Most of the older cars will be worthless for their task, but there's more than a few that might have enough get-up-and-go left in their batteries to feed Bobby's cappuccino machine for one last hurrah. Though Dean wouldn't put it past him to try to take the damn thing with him to Montana. He points to a newer Buick Oldsmobile that he knows for a fact was one of the last cars to hit the salvage yard before they shipped out for Brazil. "That one should still have a few volts. Pretty new too, so it'll take a decent charge once Bobby boots up the generator."

Castiel has other ideas though, his eyes scanning the lot and resting on a totaled Mack tractor-trailer nearby. "That one," he decides. "The battery will be bigger, yes? More powerful?"

Dean snorts. "Heavy-duty. And weighing in at about ninety pounds. Sure you still got the juice to lift that?"

Castiel narrows his eyes and smirks. "I still have the juice, Dean."

 _Maybe we can get a haircut out of it after all_ , Dean thinks, as he watches Castiel amble over to the truck. He lifts a hand to run it across his skull, where his hair has grown shaggier than he has worn it in years, and even if he misses the ease of the buzz-cut, a part of him wonders what it might be like to have Castiel twist his fingers there as Dean swallows his dick down, the same way Dean fists handfuls of Castiel's tousled curls when he thrusts his dick in between Castiel's lips. He knows he's leering when he considers lying and telling Bobby there isn't enough battery power in the whole lot to run the clippers.

Cheney is investigating the nearby pile of batteries with a keen nose as Castiel clambers up onto the truck grille, plier handles gripped between his teeth, and bends in over the interior of the engine. Dean sticks out his foot and shoves the mutt away before it can piss all over the goods, before shuffling backwards to plant his butt on a nearby Prism and admire Castiel's ass.

"I have it."

Castiel huffs at the effort as he maneuvers the battery out onto the lip of the hood. He hops down nimbly, reaches up above himself to heft the large block down, and it happens so fast then that Dean can't really follow the sequence of events. As Castiel lifts the battery off the truck body, the dog gets tangled under his feet, yelping with alarm. Unbalanced, Castiel's arms flail out and then it goes to awful slow-motion, with Dean already bolting up and off of the Prism as the battery plummets down through space and onto Castiel's foot with a dull, ground-vibrating thud.

It would be comical; in fact, Dean thinks it would be _fuckin' hee-larious_ but for the dry, brittle crunch of bone as the battery lands, and the breathy scream Castiel lets out, a cry that turns Dean into Antarctica, into a frozen stone, as he drops to his knees on the frozen gravel beside his friend while the dog races back towards the house.

Castiel is making a noise like a growl deep in his throat, as if he's biting back more cries behind the first, as Dean braces to lift and roll the battery off his foot. "Easy," Dean mutters as he surveys the damage. The extremity is at a twisted angle, appears flattened even inside the boot, and Dean can make out the lines of where the battery impacted at the end of its fall, imprinted into the leather in a ghostly shape. He bites his lip. "How does it feel?"

"Broken."

The response is raw, hurt, and it fills Dean with a sensation of helplessness, of fatalistic depression. Castiel is falling, and of course his foot is broken. And there's nothing Dean can do to stop it, this endless loop of returning time that comes to crush them, over and over again, because _we always end up here, Dean—_.

"No," Dean hisses to the long-ago voice from the future. "No, we don't."

He feels the bite of the cold through the knees of his jeans as he jerks his pigsticker out of his back pocket. If Castiel's foot is broken – and Dean knows in his gut that it is – he has to get the boot off to assess the damage before any swelling makes getting it off too much of an ordeal. He cuts through the tight knot of the lace, the blade reflecting frozen late winter sun into his eyes, and he wonders if this was how it happened for the other them. He glances up when he feels Castiel staring at him, hesitates. "Don't look," he says softly, like he used to decades before, to his kid brother. "Hurts more if you look."

Castiel nods slightly, closes his eyes as he falls back. A muscle in his jaw flexes, and a vein pulses in his neck and forehead as Dean slices through the laces all the way down, and then saws through the leather at the sides. Blood is seeping sluggishly through the sock already and Dean's first instinct is to erupt into a frustrated curse, but he swallows it back. He shrugs his jacket down off of his shoulders, folds it up into a pad of fabric before sliding his fingers underneath the foot to lift it and start easing the remains of the boot off as carefully as he can. "I'm sorry," he says, as Castiel's whole leg locks rigid.

"No, it's…" Castiel bites into his sleeve, makes a choked sound he barely stifles. "Pain, _human_ pain, transmitted through nerves…the quality is different from an injury to my grace. Sharper, more visceral. I'll get used to it."

"But you don't have to," Dean prompts, and he tries to keep his voice light as he maneuvers the makeshift cushion underneath the foot. "If you have enough mojo to lift that battery, I guess you have enough to fix this, huh? Like, right now?"

It takes Castiel a moment before he answers, struggling to keep his voice even. "I'm saving what's left of that particular skill for a rainy day."

Dean laughs, sort of. "Cas, it's raining man. Okay?"

"No. No, just…" Castiel cranes his neck, examines the foot critically. A faint sheen of sweat dots his brow, and his face is ashen. "How bad is it?" he asks thinly. "There's a…buzzing sensation."

Dean swallows. "You can't walk on it. Just a guess, but I'm thinking fractures in the smaller bones. Skin's cut up a bit, but there's no bone poking out." He can hear his voice speed up as he thinks himself through it. "But there could be nerve damage. And circulation is a problem. I mean, if we were living in first-world conditions we could get you to an ER, get the damage checked out, but we're back in the middle ages, Cas. People lose their feet over shit like this. So if you've got any spare mojo stashed in your back pocket, I think you should—"

"No!" Castiel snaps. "I'll tough it out. I have to save what's left. This is nothing. There could be worse up ahead, and you know it."

Dean lets out an explosive exhale. "You're thinking it about it, aren't you?"

Castiel looks at him with pain-clouded eyes, pauses to press his palm over them, and if he's hiding tears there Dean can't see them, he can only smell the acrid adrenaline rising up from their sweat as Castiel dips his head and sighs out a shuddering breath. "I broke my foot then," he continues, in a strained whisper. "You told me. And if it is—"

"Shut up," Dean hisses.

"It could mean that—"

"Did you hear what I said? Shut up, dammit! Nothing is set!"

Dean sits back on his haunches, scrubs a hand through his hair as he looks away, over the pile of batteries to Cheney, where the mutt is sitting and watching them forlornly. "It just means you tripped over a dog and that's it, that's all it means," he insists. "Doesn't add up to shit. Don't talk about 2014, you know why? Because it's 2012, and I say so. The world doesn't end until I fuckin' say it does, okay?"

He looks back, holds Castiel's eyes for a long moment and Castiel closes his own with something like relief and leans back again, while Dean's fingers plant feverish prints over the muscle of his friend's calf as it twitches out distress beneath his hand. "I need to move you, get you to the house," he warns. "If you're set on doing this the hard way, it'll hurt."

Castiel swallows, says, "Okay. Okay."

It comes out in a thin gasp that reminds Dean that Castiel had needed a couple of Bobby's horse pills for the migraine that followed the flash of grace from the Impala. He'd joked about it, teasing his friend for getting taken out by a simple headache. _No joking this time_ , he thinks. "I'll get you something for the pain first," he says, and his tongue feels like a lethargic slug in his mouth. "Fetch Mira out here too. Lucky we got a doctor in the house, huh?"

Castiel grins weakly, and the dog creeps up closer and gives a guilty whine as Dean stands. "Look after him, mutt," Dean orders, and Cheney barks and settles down on the dirt there beside Castiel as Dean heads back to the house.

Dean hollers for Mira as he slams indoors, but he knows Castiel needs something to knock out the sharper edge of his injury before they move him. There's morphine in the medkit, he knows, but – _no_. 

He heads upstairs to Bobby's bathroom, flicks open the medicine cabinet, and starts poking through the crammed-in contents for the Oxycontin he last rooted out of there two weeks before. _Yahtzee_ , and he plucks the bottle from the back of the shelf, twists to make his way back downstairs.

He's already outside the bathroom when it dawns on him that there is no telltale maraca-rattle of pills inside plastic like there was before.

He stops cold, steps back into the bathroom and holds the bottle up to the sunlight streaming in through the window, even though he doesn't actually need to look to confirm what he already knows: there's no more Oxy.

 _Just a coincidence_ , he thinks.

He lets the bottle slip from his fingers and into the wastebasket and turns back to the medicine cabinet. He knows there is Percocet in there, along with a half-full container of benzos, his own drug of choice for sleeping through the nightmares after Stull, though he hasn't ever wanted to think why Bobby might have needed them. He shuffles through the cabinet again as he searches them out, clicks his tongue against his teeth as he finds the bottle and snatches it up between his thumb and forefinger.

 _Empty_.

There is a numb second or two, followed by a familiar itch climbing up his spine and along the back of his neck, the feeling of betrayal that he remembers from bitter experience. It feels the way it did when his brother punched him in the face in some faraway motel before he left with Ruby to raise the devil, the way it did when he suddenly knew, _knew_ , that Castiel had been lying to him for more than a year.

In the span of those seconds, all his Hell wounds are forgotten and faded in the face of a surge of anger, and he regresses, tumbling into the recesses of his memory through images that cut even deeper: the scent of brimstone heavy in the air, Alistair's face twisted like a knotted rag above him, the rack where he was once a helpless prisoner and then became the skilled apprentice. With effort, he brings this blind lightning-crack of fury back into line, and he hopes the fact he even can means he's growing, progressing, becoming a better person. Whatever the fuck that actually means.

He turns back to the medicine cabinet for the third time, and he kids himself he feels calmer.

But he isn't sure if he can maintain his composure when he finds the Percocet bottle, because he knows even as his fingers graze the surface that the damn thing is empty. "Fool me once," he mutters to himself, and he bends to fish out the first empty from the trashcan before spinning on his heel.

The dog is still watching dutifully over Castiel when Dean gets back to the spot where he left his friend. Castiel lifts himself up on his elbows with some effort, and Dean can tell by the way his throat moves that he's suppressing another groan. He looks part-ill, part thankful, and relieved to see Dean.

It's everything Dean can do to keep from socking him in the face.

He crunches over the gravel and leans down without ceremony to grip Castiel under one arm and haul him up, broken foot and all. Castiel has pride enough to smother a shriek before he begins cursing in Enochian as he twists in Dean's arms. Dean lets him go, throwing his weight back onto his feet, and Castiel does yelp then, before crumpling unceremoniously back down on his ass. When he manages to get proper words out, his voice is rough with pain.

"Dean, what's wrong with you? It hurts to stand on it, you can't just lift me like that—"

Dean kicks viciously at the gravel underfoot, sending a shower of stones pinging off the stacked wall of salvaged batteries. "Honestly didn't think you'd feel it with so much fuckin' junk in your system," he snaps.

Castiel goggles up at him, presses a hand up to his head. "What are you talking about?"

Dean thrusts his hands into his back pockets, brings them out fisting the empty prescription bottles. He throws them at Castiel, and his friend doesn't even make a token effort to protect himself as they glance off his chest and jaw on their way to the ground.

Cheney whines uneasily and slinks off again, seeking shelter in the shadow of a nearby Toyota pickup.

Castiel winces as he shifts position on the ground, with his broken foot stuck out and leaving bloody streaks everywhere, and his other leg bent to gain traction as he reaches and snags a bottle. He holds it up to the light and then looks at Dean, his astonishment slowly fading into understanding. "Wait…you think – you think I—"

"No, I think the dog ate them, Cas."

And just like that, Castiel is gone.

It has been so long since the angel just disappeared into thin air with a subtle ruffle of wings that for once all Dean can do is stand in the middle of the junkyard, both flabbergasted and hollow of thought. Cold air buffets him as he stares down at the gravel where Castiel was lying seconds ago, and all that's left of his friend is a shredded boot and Dean's own jacket, splotched and streaked with blood.

Dean shivers and hugs himself tight to shut out the wind, but it doesn't help. He turns and tramps back up to the porch, where he can smell the stench of Camels, unfiltered. Meg is seated on an old lawn chair pushed into the space between the siding and the porch swing. Its gaudy nylon fabric is threading out at the seat so her denim-clad ass droops through, and the aluminum arm rests are scratched to shit and discolored where she stubs her cigarettes out and then lets them smolder on the lumber where they fall.

"You know, communication is key in any relationship," she remarks, and she takes a gulp from a bottle of Johnny Walker she has propped against her thigh. A long cylinder of ash is building from the tip of her cigarette, and she lets it, while a skinny plume of smoke whirls out in the chill breeze.

"I agree," Dean snaps back at her. "Got something to say about it?"

She laughs, says, "Talk to momma Meg," and pats the porch swing beside her.

Dean stares at her for a minute. Her dark hair hasn't been washed in days and it hangs stringy around the frame of a gaunt, pale face, and Dean thinks that despite her newfound humanity she exudes something, an unnatural tension. He can't shake the feeling that she's just a simmering nuclear bomb waiting to explode and take them all out in the process, even if he fed her that morning's cup of holy water himself just an hour or so earlier.

"I think I'm capable of fucking up my own relationships, thank you very much," he responds tersely.

She shrugs. "You could always use a little help in that department. Looks like a nasty one this time. Clarence didn't even stop to say goodbye. Where do you suppose he flew off to?"

"I'm sure he didn't go far," Dean huffs, paused with his hand on the knob of the door.

"You sure, this time?" Meg teases. "Maybe he finally decided he had enough of being blamed for things he didn't do, or of all those manly heroics you're so obsessed with."

"Because you've been so successful in your personal life," Dean mocks in turn. "Hey, who were you planning on calling when we got back from the Island of Doctor Moreau, before you shacked up with us? Boyfriends? Girlfriends? Sisterhood of the traveling pants?" He raises his eyebrows as she watches him, puts a hand to his ear as though he's hard of hearing. "I'm waiting. Come on, more cowbell."

Meg's lips pucker like she just sampled a lemon. The ash falls from her cigarette and layers a gentle burn across her fingers. She regards it with annoyance, as she lifts what's left of the butt to her lips to inhale smoke that wreathes out between her lips before answering.

"Oh, I wouldn't worry about me, Dean," she drawls with an eyeroll. "See, I really don't think I'm cut out for this kind of clean living. Besides, your brother's sweetie-pie keeps giving me the evil eye, and Bobby treats me like I personally killed his wife or something. So I'm thinking to mosey on out of here any day now."

"Well don't let the door hit your ass on the way," Dean retorts.

She pulls back her lips from small, sharp teeth. "I won't. But I'm thinking two along the road is better than one, and seeing as how you just broke up with your honeybunny maybe I'll see if Clarence wants to keep me company when—"

"You stop that thought right there," Dean jumps in, with a burst of rage similar to the one he just sent blasting out at his _honeybunny_. "He isn't hitching his cart to a fuckin' demon."

Meg's eyes go slitty and mean. "Now isn't that sweet. Thinking I was part of the human club, just to find out it's restricted." Her voice goes hard. "I never had a chance with you, did I? Nope, you already made up your mind before I set foot in this house."

After a derisive snort, Dean tells her, "My mind was made up back when you were still bottom feeding in Hell, and now you're not doing much better. Maybe if you stopped feeling sorry for yourself you could do something useful, be a part of the group. You know, sitting on a porch drinking your sorrows away won't undo anything Alistair did to you. I know it better than anyone. You got a golden chance to become something better, and you're just drowning it in Margaritaville."

She sets the back of her palm against her forehead in a theatrical demonstration of hurt. "And this is why I turn to smoking, and drinking, and snorting hillbilly heroin in the bathroom – why thank you, Dr. Phil, I was unaware of my emotional damage and thought I was pill-popping for, I don't know, more _mundane_ reasons. Like that you suck, for instance."

Dean's mouth opens and closes, and he has to regroup as he looks at her again. "It was you?" he manages finally. "You've been eating the meds like they're Pez?"

"Aw, what's the matter Deano?" she answers. "You didn't think it was Clarence, did you?"

There is something Dean can sense in the syrup of her voice, a slow curl of molasses that suggests she knew exactly what she was doing and how those empty pill bottles might be misconstrued, and yes, she hoped he did think it was Clarence, very much indeed. Dean's brain is a starburst of emotion and thought then, as he filters through it all. Why do such a thing, why put empty pill bottles back when any ordinary person who used them up would throw them away? Why do it on purpose, to create a schism between two people?

He hears himself saying it aloud, his voice harsh with disbelief. "You did it on purpose."

She grins, wide and predatory. "Well, just like your boyfriend once said, I have only your welfare at heart, Dean," she replies. "Surely you know this by now?"

The reference back to R'lyeh only mystifies Dean more. "But he helped you," he protests, and she shrugs.

"This isn't about him." She forms the shape of a gun with her hand, purses her lips to make a wet, whooshing sound. "And you're damn lucky it isn't the super-soaker with the jet pack."

As she stares up at him, unrepentant, Dean is still grasping after a larger picture at work, attempting to pin down conspiracy theories tied to her demon nature, but on that sneered-out reference his brain burns rubber as it screeches to a halt and he realizes the truth: there is no grand scheme behind it. She did it just _because_. Just because she could. Because she still is a moral void even without her power, and in the absence of her ability to torture and kill, she has nothing else to keep her amused and occupied but petty spite. It makes Dean shiver because it makes him think of the dream-vision he had of his soulless brother curling his mouth up into a thoughtful smile as he was turned.

This isn't that, isn't anywhere near that, but Dean makes the decision in a split second, points down the path, towards the gate. "Ten seconds," he rasps out. "Shotgun."

"I'm sorry?" Meg says, as though she didn't hear him right. She leans forward in the chair, a hand up behind her ear to mimic Dean's gesture. "More cowbell, Deano."

But Dean is moving already, into the house and through the kitchen to the dining room, where he knows the Remington Bobby uses for deer hunting is on the top of the old wooden buffet. He leaps up, knocks the old shotgun into his hand, and pulls open the drawer to root out a box of shells. Some of them slip from his fingers and go rattling away from him, but all he needs are the two, as he slides back the action and jams the first one in.

He sees Meg's shadow from the screen door, where what little warm air that exists inside the house is swiftly funneling out into the heartless South Dakota landscape. She scratches at the screen, and tobacco smoke drifts in.

"Dean? Chillax, it was just a prank. You don't really mean—"

"Five," he announces, as he swings the shotgun muzzle in her direction until the sight falls over her silhouette. He doesn't know if it has in fact been five seconds, but he's certain he doesn't care as he takes the first steps back to the porch.

By the time he kicks open the screen door Meg is already backing down the steps, two spots of high color lighting up her cheekbones. "I can't believe I ever thought we had something in common, that we were brothers in arms," she blusters. "Back on the island, when your brother and your boyfriend were—"

"Start walking, or I _will_ kick you in the pants," Dean clips out. "I got nothing in common with you. Nothing."

"Oh, you keep telling yourself that," she says, "and maybe one day you'll even believe it." She throws back her head and laughs then, transforms into the Meg he knows, her eyes flashing with life. "Maybe I'll scratch right through my tattoo once I hit the road, see if I can't recover my old vigor," she spits. "Maybe you're doing me a favor after all that. Because when I was bad, I was wicked." She finishes off with a wink. "Just like you."

She pirouettes, starts mincing away from him, swinging her hips at him. And there is a moment when Dean battles with himself, thinks that he should sink one between her shoulders for all the crap she has pulled.

 _She's human_.

He keeps the gun trained on her retreating backside.

 _She's human_ , he tells himself again.

He can just about hear the stream of invective she's hurling back at him as she marches on, cigarette still in one hand and her bottle in the other. She whirls back around, takes a swig like a car refueling, yells at him some more.

"… _dipshit_ … _motherfucker_ … _low-down, cocksucking asshole…_ "

She's human, and Dean lets the shotgun drop long enough to yell back, "Yeah, well, at least you got the cocksucking part right."

There's the sound of a tap at the screen door and Dean startles, turning with the shotgun trained on the floor, and he feels his cheeks heat to what he's full sure is hot pink.

Mira is standing behind the screen in a pair of rumpled sweat pants and one of Sam's old shirts. Her face is raw of eyeliner and piercings and the hard angles of her face have been softened by sleep, or maybe by love in its bloom, or maybe by Sam keeping her up all night with his big moose snores.

Dean hopes it's moose snores, because he so damn well doesn't want to think about his brother _doing it_.

Which brings him full circle to the last words that left his mouth, and Mira's stare as she tracks her eyes from Dean's face to the shotgun and back again, this time to his lips. Dean could swear her expression goes contemplative for just a second, before she breathes, "God, this family."

She looks past Dean then, to Meg as she approaches the gate. "She'll revert," she announces matter-of-factly. "It's what she is." She turns and starts padding back through the kitchen, "I would have ended her," floating back over her shoulder, before Dean remembers that he needs her help, and why.

Assuming Castiel even comes back.

 _Fuck_.

He sighs, rubs his fingers hard across his brow and thinks about tearing his hair out, shooting random things, or maybe blowing up a car; or maybe all three at once, so he might feel better.

Dean doesn't find Castiel in the house.

He pokes his head into the bedrooms and even the attic before he heads back down the steps. Bobby gets in from checking the back perimeter of his property and asks where his batteries are on the way to milk the cow, but Dean waves him off before he stomps down to the iron bunker in the basement, in the hopes that perhaps Castiel is sulking on the old military cot in the corner.

Nothing, and Dean stands dejected in the dim glow of his flashlight, staring at the empty shadows thinking, _come out now, I'm sorry, I didn't mean it, I'm a fuckin' idiot, come on Cas, please_. But he knows damn well that there isn't a single thing he's gotten in life from begging for it, not on Alistair's table and not anywhere else, so he keeps his silence and after a moment he trudges back up the steps and realizes there's one last place he hasn't yet checked.

Dean finds him in the Impala.

He doesn't knock on the metal to signal his arrival, or open the door – the only working door his baby still has – but stands outside and watches Castiel where he reclines on the back seat, apparently in a futile attempt to steal some comfort for himself.

Dean was half-hoping that in the time that passed, Castiel might have fixed his foot but is seems he got no further than expending whatever is left of his magic on flight, and the extremity is resting on the center console between the two front seats, bare, its sock cast off who knows where. Dean winces as he studies the injury; the top bones look caved in, the skin is mashed to a bloody pulp, and the whole foot is badly swollen.

He sighs and leans down on the sill. Jagged edges of the blown-out back windshield refract light against Castiel's face and paint a rainbow. When the car's struts – or what remains of them – sag under Dean's weight, Castiel opens his eyes, but he doesn't look up.

"Where did you go?" Dean asks.

"Here," his friend mutters. "I was hiding. And sulking."

"I'm sorry," Dean returns, because he needs to get it out there right now.

The silence remains. It's far thicker now, the tension greater than before, and Dean can't place what it is, what dynamic has changed. There has been far too much shit for them to devolve into this, and he scrubs a hand across his chin, where his stubble itches, and wonders if this is how it happens; if it's one too many fights in a stormy relationship and it falls apart like stale bread, whole and then crumbling, and that's when 2014 comes riding down on them. He saw it in the complicated way _that_ Dean and _that_ Castiel looked at each other, a hardness in their eyes that bordered on hatred but softened when each thought the other couldn't see. It comes with the loss and disintegration of love, and Dean can barely hold his breath when he thinks of it like that; that love is the key, and to lose it is to change the course of everything, for the worse.

"I'll be back, okay?" he says, and he turns and walks away, boots scuffing through the dirt slowly, and it's another trip up the front steps, to the old hallway closet where the smell of mothballs permeates. He finds the cold steel frame of Bobby's wheelchair by touch, drags it out and shakes it, and the arms expand as it unfolds. He studies the empty form and shape of it, remembers when Bobby used to roll back and forth across the floor and it would make a steady rapping noise. Things were different then. His angel was different then, and so was he, and so was Sam. And they can never go back now.

He takes the wheelchair by the handles, steering it across the floor, through the doorway and down the steps, scouring a path through the gravel before he comes to a stop at the car. Castiel watches him and shivers in the cold.

"Did you use all of your mojo up when you took off?" Dean asks, gentle.

"No," Castiel whispers. "But it will take time to recover. It feels better here in the car, where some traces of it remain."

They do not speak of _grace_ , like it was someone who passed away suddenly and without warning, and it hurts to say their name.

"Mira's getting some stuff set up inside so she can take a look at your foot," Dean diverts, and he spends a moment considering how to extricate Castiel from the car, until Castiel breaks into his thoughts.

"Prove you're really here…"

His expression is oddly wistful, the echo of Dean's own plea in the night is yearning, and Dean doesn't hesitate. He opens the door and crowds in to wedge himself onto the bench seat beside Castiel, and he threads his arms under his friend, pulling him close, fitting them tight together, so tight Dean can feel the expansion and contraction of Castiel's chest as he breathes, feel the radiant heat that creeps out of his skin.

"Tell me, love," Dean says softly. "Tell me everything."

Castiel sighs. "It's sharp, this humanity. The host was smooth, with no end and no real beginning, and it just _was_. It was effortless. But this…this _humanity_ is messy and ill-fitting, it is hunger, it is exhaustion, it is apathy, misery, guilt."

He's just an inch away from Dean, his breath warm on Dean's lips as he goes on, and his eyes are suddenly steady and knowing. "We are the same, Dean, you and I. This humanity is like broken glass to us, so many shattered pieces, and we feel as if we are trying to fit them all back together to form a whole so that we can exist in this world. But this world turns like a knife in our wounds. And sometimes…sometimes…"

"It terrifies us." Dean picks up what he knows his friend is going to say, whispers it out. "Sometimes it terrifies us."

"Sometimes it terrifies us," Castiel echoes him faintly.

They stare at each other then, for a long time, until Castiel runs a thumb over Dean's lower lip. "Humanity is also this," he breathes. "And I would not be without it."

Dean reaches his hand up to brush back Castiel's hair, grown long and tousled, and here inside the Impala with his angel he feels safe and protected, feels like all of eternity could unfold here between them and this, this is good enough, because they are the same. "I'm going to make it right, all of it," he pledges, and words spill out, words Castiel wouldn't let him say in the other place where he felt the same sense of sanctuary. "Cas, there's times I've taken you for granted, and I—"

"Dean, stop—"

"No," Dean cuts his friend off. "You had your say back on Tu'ugamau." He locks their eyes together, smiles a little. "Don't put me on a pedestal, Cas. Fuck-ups are a two-way street, and I fucked us up too. Blah-blah Raphael, remember? I let you own yours, now you let me own mine, okay? And I love you. Always."

Castiel returns his gaze steadily. "I know," he replies.

There is no hint of sentiment in their voices. There is a vein of controlled hurt and overlapping experience that wends through them, around them, binds them tight to each other. They can't be unknotted with words alone.

"I have to try to save what's left of it, you know," Castiel murmurs.

It takes Dean a moment to realize he's talking about his grace again. "You mentioned it."

"You never asked me why. I mean – specifically why."

Dean arches an eyebrow. "Specifically why?"

Castiel's eyes grow fond. "I'm saving it for you, Dean. For 2014. You said—"

"No," Dean jumps in decisively. " _No._ It's not happening. Period."

"Maybe not," Castiel concedes. "But I'm going to keep my grace like a loaded gun in my back pocket until I know we're safe. Maybe that other Castiel, the one Zachariah showed you, took shit from you and walked into the meat grinder on your say so, but _this_ Castiel? Isn't going to take your shit. So you suck it up, and realize that I'm going to shoot down the first thing that comes for you. I won't be sticking my dick in everything with a pulse and toking up while you take the hits for the rest of us."

"I didn't—"

"What you're going to do is learn to take orders, Dean. Now, shut the hell up."

"What? I didn't—"

Castiel doesn't let him finish before he catches Dean's mouth with the hot press of his own and gyrates his hips into Dean's, pressing himself there and stealing Dean's breath from his lungs with an artful flick of his tongue in Dean's mouth. He retreats long enough to watch Dean splutter for breath, his eyes just a rim of blue as his pupils expand in onyx concentrics.

When Castiel lets out a hiss as he shifts, Dean opens his mouth to say something and Castiel holds up a finger in warning.

"Ah-ah…what did I say?"

And before Dean can speak again, Castiel closes his mouth with another kiss.

In the end, the pain is too much, and Dean withdraws and lift-hauls Castiel from the car into the wheelchair, all one hundred seventy-five pounds of stubborn, angry angel.

As Castiel stares tiredly at him, Dean isn't really sure if he's any less worried about any of it. But he can fake it with the best of them. "I'd like very much to take some orders from you later, actually," he leers. "But first, let's get you inside, get you patched up."

After some figuring, Dean decides that carrying Castiel into the house is more effective than trying to lug him up the porch steps in the wheelchair, and Mira comes out to help while Dean hauls the angel back into his arms. There is a moment when the wind plays with Castiel's hair gone long and Dean likes him there, seated in his arms. It's stupid and maybe a little girlish, but holding Castiel in his arms gives him the sense that he can hold him forever, defend him, ensure that nothing comes to hurt him. Castiel says nothing but Dean thinks he knows it; that this might have been the pose Castiel once took when he dragged him out of Hell.

Inside the house, Dean smells the astringent taint of antiseptic on the air, and sure enough Sam is in the kitchenette off of Bobby's study, standing guard over a pot of water bubbling on the stove. A spread of towels is on the table behind him, along with a cluster of military grade sterile bandages, and bottles of iodine and hydrogen peroxide.

"You're cooking my favorite meal, Sammy," Dean says and it earns him an amused sound from his brother as Sam ambles over.

Dean lays Castiel out on the broken-in couch and Sam rubs the side of his temple in deep thought as he surveys the damage and whistles. "Shit," he comments. "Can't you just tap into the mojo, Cas?"

"What? It's not that bad," Dean fences, even if he thinks it is, even if he thinks Castiel might not walk right again if he doesn't magic finger the bones back together. "He's saving the mojo for a real emergency."

Castiel says nothing but seems content to palm pain-sweat from his brow and then recline with one arm behind his head as he glances from Dean to Sam and back again. "You know, if it wasn't for the pain all this attention would be quite enjoyable," he observes, as Mira kneels beside the couch and carefully eases the hem of his jeans up and away from the swollen foot and ankle.

Hands gentle, she moves the foot, and Castiel bites back a groan. "Oh come on," she mocks mildly. "Don't be so wet. You've fought off God knows what in Hell twice now, taken on Lucifer even."

Her tone is sympathetic, but Dean still finds himself rocketing from zero to alpha-dog protectiveness at the speed of light. "He says human pain is different," he butts in, defensive. "He's trying to save his grace, and he isn't used to going cold turkey with something as bad as this."

Sam makes a barely discernible noise that might be amusement, but Mira snorts.

"I've seen women squat down to give birth in the dirt without making a sound, then lift up their newborn and start picking crops again," she says, as she twists the foot slightly, along to another stifled whimper.

Dean bristles. "Bobby told me you packed Sam off to bed for a simple headache."

His brother smirks at him. "I'm special, Dean. I get the full bedside manner."

Rolling her eyes, Mira says, "Can you wiggle your toes?"

Gritting his teeth, Castiel squints down at the end of his leg, seems to be willing the digits to move, but nothing happens and his head falls back onto the arm of the couch on a long drawn out gasp.

Mira sits back on her heels. "I can't confirm how extensive the damage is without an x-ray, but if the battery is as heavy as you say then the foot is broken. It's closed fractures, at least, but it'll compromise his mobility. The wheelchair's all right, but I'd hate to think what would happen if we needed to be on the move, and fast."

"That's the least of it," Sam points out. "What about infection? Without the power on twenty four-seven, we don't have the best hygiene now. Simple infections have killed more people than the plague. Get an infection in your foot…" He shakes his head. "Dad used to talk about it."

Dean can remember it, a distant memory, _tell us about the war, dad_ , and John's voice a comforting rumble in the night, when they couldn't sleep because the car was freezing cold or too hot for breath. "He said that in 'Nam they used to get fungus on their feet," he recalls slowly, as it comes back to him. "He called it jungle rot, said it was vicious."

"If gangrene sets in and he doesn't have enough juice left to fix himself, we're talking amputation," Sam warns.

It might have crossed Dean's mind already, but hearing it stated so baldly still throws him off, and he flounders until Castiel takes pity on him.

"Don't everybody write me off all at once," the angel says dryly. "I'm sure I'll have plenty of time to chisel my tombstone and save you the trouble."

"That's the point, though," Mira informs him tartly. "This may not be a big problem now, but small problems become big problems fast. We've got antibiotics, but if you're doing this the hard way, we're going to need more just in case. And plaster of Paris or fiberglass for a cast, too." She frowns, adds, "fiberglass would be better, it's waterproof and more durable."

It's something to focus on that isn't the mental image of Castiel biting on a stick while they saw off his foot, and Dean seizes on it. "How about that medical supply drugstore just outside of town? Has that been looted?"

Sam jumps in. "From what Bobby's told me everywhere has been looted, but it's worth a shot. Maybe we can stock up. Painkillers, antibiotics, dressings. They might have crutches too. Could mean the difference between losing the foot and keeping it."

"That's a good idea," Castiel agrees. "I like feet."

Sam raises an eyebrow. "Kinky."

It's forced, because all of them are forcing it, Dean knows, but he plays along anyway and barfs quietly to the side. "Dude, I will put a lot of things in my mouth, but—"

He's cut off mid-flow by Bobby's bootsteps as they clump up the hall from the back of the house, and Sam is adroit at using the diversion. "Have to be going now," he announces, catching at Mira's sleeve and tugging her along with him. "How about you work out your feelings for Cas's feet while you tell Bobby what's up, Dean. We'll meet you at the truck."

Bobby is already glowering as Dean turns, and he stabs a finger towards Castiel as he carries his bucket of milk around them and into the kitchen. "What the hell happened?" he barks, his gruffness not quite disguising his dismay.

"I broke my foot," Castiel tells him glumly.

"He dropped one of your goddamn batteries on it," Dean adds. "I hope your cappuccino is worth it."

The old man fixes him with an unimpressed stare. "I'm sure he can fix it, boy."

"Except that he won't," Dean snaps. "He says he's saving his mojo for an emergency."

Bobby huffs, walks back around the couch to examine the injury, and turns a flat look on the angel. "Well who knows, maybe one will come up," he says acidly.

Castiel flicks his eyes to Dean, and Dean sees his friend's throat flex as he swallows, but then his jaw sets firm and as obstinate as before, out in the lot. His mind is clearly made up, and Dean sighs. "We're headed out to that medical supply store on the strip outside of town, hoping it hasn't been looted too badly."

As Dean turns to go, Castiel catches his hand. "Be careful," he murmurs.

Dean nods mutely, slants his eyes over to Bobby, and the old man rolls his eyes.

"He'll be fine."

And maybe he will, maybe it's nothing, not really. But Dean has a roiling in his gut he finds hard to shake off; a deep and persistent worry that nothing is going to be right ever again and that most of all, neither will he, and he won't be able to control the moment he turns from Castiel's everything, his _all_ , into Alistair's most beloved student.

He heads out for the truck, glances back just once over his shoulder to stare into blue and notice abstractedly that Bobby has his hand resting on Castiel's shoulder, his fingers kneading the muscles there.

As Mira's truck, an old GMC with a grille like chromium teeth and mud splatters caked up its sides, jounces up through the lot, under the sign and onto the main road, Dean feels sick but he isn't sure why. Without being able to come up with a concrete reason, he doesn't say anything at all as he looks back at the mountain-mirage of the glamour, even if he wants to tell his brother he'd like a pass on this run. He imagines himself bleating it out, the fact he wants to stay with Castiel because he loves him and doesn't want to leave his side. _Fuckin' idiot_ , he scoffs at himself inwardly for his vulnerability. Now is not the time to back down. No, he has to man-up for this. There might be another time when he has to leave Castiel behind for the good of the group, and love just won't be enough.

Even the outlying areas of the town look eerily dead and empty in the moonlight. Faded signs swing lethargically in the breeze, broken windows and kicked-in doors form jagged eyes and mouths in the storefronts, and abandoned cars dumped at crazy angles block the side streets and parking lots.

Mira steers them through the desolation with her hands sharp-knuckled on the wheel, and Sam points out the slew of parking tickets one last police officer left behind beneath the wipers, as though he were insistent on doing his job even at the final hour, when it was clear no one left to prosecute. "Probably thought he was keeping some semblance of order," he says. "Or maybe just went plain nuts at the end."

The roll slow and cautious down the main drag. There are shapes and silhouettes that might be bodies in the shadow of the store awnings, and a couple of definites beside a cluster of wrecked vehicles. What looks like a child's Barbie doll is lying in the gutter, and Dean fixates on it as Mira navigates around a gaping hole in the middle of the road, its manhole cover conspicuously absent.

"There's the drugstore," Sam points out, and Mira nods once, curt, as she pulls around to the back of the building. They are all on high-alert, eyes darting through brush, around the hulks of rusting cars, trying to see through walls and predict what might be lurking behind every shadow and broken piece of detritus that litters the street.

"I got a bad feeling about this," Sam says as the engine dies and they sit together in the front, contemplating the looming shadow of the local Chet's Emporium.

"You can buy me a postcard and write all about it," Dean retorts. "Let's make it quick, huh?"

Inside, Sam catches a mouthful of spiderweb and spends a minute spitting out bits of dead firefly as his eyes adjust to the dim surroundings. He hears Mira close behind him and then both she and Dean fan out to his sides, flashlights aimed down at the floor as they pick their way through the debris of generic merchandise, junk food and hygiene products, cast aside and kicked around for no other purpose than destruction. Did fish-mutants do this? Or locals? Sam pauses to wonder just how different people are from monsters when they get desperate. Not very, as it turns out.

"Hey," his brother calls out as Mira forges ahead of him into the darkness. "Let's make it quick, right? And no prescription painkillers."

"No prescription painkillers?" Sam asks, sliding his duffel off his back as they duck down the pharmacy aisle. He grabs large bottles of peroxide and rubbing alcohol as he goes, band-aids, medical tape and gauze dressings too, tossing them into his pack. Surgical scissors, always handy; and then, since Dean hasn't answered him, Sam prods. "Why not?"

Before he can register a reply from his brother, his eye is briefly caught by the feminine hygiene shelf, and with a quick look at Mira, Sam shuffles over there, grabs a couple of jumbo boxes of tampons to go with it, ignoring the raised _getting pretty close, huh?_ eyebrow Dean sends his way. He's just squatting down to investigate the lower shelves when he hears the muffled shatter of glass, and he turns to see Dean extricating the handle of his Maglite from a display case and using it to knock the remaining shards of glass out of the frame.

"You can't just grab and go. He needs the right size for his height."

Sam looks over to his left to see that Mira is pinning Dean in place with a hard eye as he tugs the nearest set of crutches out of the display.

"They'll do," Dean mutters back, and he sounds distracted because he has been drifting off since they pulled out of the lot. He's worried about more than Castiel's broken foot; Sam can see it in the way his brother's jaw clenches and the muscles in his cheeks twitch, and there's a vertical furrow between Dean's eyebrows that hasn't really let up since he hauled Castiel inside and hollered frantically for Mira.

Mira growls out something under her breath and stands her ground. "Dean, they won't. He's becoming more human every day isn't he? If they're too long, they could damage the nerves under his arms; too short and he'll hurt his back. Either pick the right size, or find some that adjust." She directs her flashlight along the length of the aluminum. "Those don't adjust."

Sam can see that Dean is barely holding it together, his fingers strumming the air, and he thinks he better cut the imminent explosion off at the pass. "Mira, why don't you go get the meds?" he suggests. "I got this."

She looks at him pointedly, and he shrugs. "Broke my ankle first year at Stanford, had to use a pair of crutches to keep the weight off of it."

She nods, runs her hand through his hair as she walks past him. "Stay sharp," she says, jerking her head towards the windows. "Looks deserted out there, but Bobby and I ran into trouble here a couple of months back."

Sam is pushing up when Dean calls out, low and strained.

"No oxy. I mean it. No perc either."

Mira pauses a moment. "We need to stock up on everything, especially if we're hitting the road soon," she responds neutrally, before she disappears back into the pharmacy.

Dean looks away from Sam as he steps up closer, busies himself rummaging through the display, but his shoulders are rigid.

"Okay," Sam broaches as he sets his flashlight on one of the lower shelves and reaches past his brother to poke through the crutches himself. "Far as I remember, the pad is supposed to fall about an inch and half to two inches below your armpits, and the handgrips need to be even with the top of your hips, with your arms a little bent. He's what…an inch or two shorter than you?"

Dean grunts noncommittally, but he twists around, raises his arm, and lets Sam prop the crutch up against him. "I think these should do," Sam decides, as he gauges the height. "You want to tell me what this is all about?" he adds quietly. "I mean – I know you're worried about him and all, but—"

"Nothing he could get hooked on," Dean grates out. "I can't watch him all the time. So I don't want anything in the house that he could get hooked on."

And it dawns on Sam, and he knows his mouth drops open a little and his eyes widen. "This is about that future vision of Zachariah's…"

Words come tumbling out of his brother in a nervous, high-pitched torrent. "That Cas told me he broke his foot, said it laid him up for months. He didn't say it, but what if that was why he turned into a stoner? What if he started taking the hard stuff then, and that other me just let him? What if—"

"Wait," Sam chips in, hand coming down to grip Dean's shoulder and still the flow. "Just – calm down. Calm down, Dean. Okay?"

His brother stares at him, intense, finally blinks his eyes closed for a long moment.

"That other Cas, did he…" Sam trails off, not really sure of how to ask the question that springs to mind. But, what the hell, just go for it; it's not as if he doesn't know the deal between his brother and his friend, and Dean knows he knows. "Were he and the other you, were they – you know. Like you two are? _Together_?"

Dean's eyes snap open, a little haunted. "Jesus, I hope not." His hand comes up to rub at his brow. "Other-me sent other-Cas walking right into a trap." He sucks in his bottom lip, then shakes his head. "No. No, I don't think they were."

Sam cocks his head. "See?" he reassures gently. "You and our Cas being together, it's a _difference_ , and that means something. We changed it all, Dean, we even changed you and Cas. That was just one possible future Zachariah showed you, and it's never going to happen because everything is different now. You and Cas – me too. Detroit…" Sam has to stop and swallow thickly past that memory, and the automatic recall of what followed it. "Me saying yes," he finally manages. "We're out the other side of all of that. It's done, _over_ , and none of the stuff you saw in that future is even possible."

Dean loosens up, blows out long and slow, and Sam holds his brother's gaze for another moment. "Alright?"

After a weak grin, Dean nods. "Alright. I'm alright, Sammy."

Sam follows up with a light slap to his brother's cheek, turns to scan the shelves again. "Mira said we should pick up one of those cast boots for him. Same size feet as you, right? Or is he a size sm—"

Mira's low whistle from the back of the drugstore has them both dropping to their knees. She stabs a finger at the front of the store, mouths, _company_ , and Sam cranes his neck to peer cautiously up front. Dean is already on the move, crabbing his way along the aisle, and Sam crouches down to follow him.

"Demons," Dean mutters, motioning to Sam's left.

Sam squints out into the moonlit street, and he can barely see them there, a small group lounging against a car, three or four bulky guys and one smaller figure. He frowns. "How can you tell?"

Dean grimaces. "I can smell their stink. Sulfur. Fuck knows, I had enough time to get used to it down there." He jerks his head back in the direction they came. "Let's clear out, we don't want trouble…" He trails off then, shuffles right back up to the glass. "Jesus."

Sam presses his face up to the glass, scopes the street for whatever has caught Dean's attention. "Jesus," he echoes his brother, as he sees Meg marching up to the shadowy group.

She stops about ten feet away, hands on her hips, waits until the smaller demon peels away from the huddle and approaches her. The moon conveniently beams down a silvery ray of light as the two converge, the unknown demon wearing a dark haired young woman, and they circle each other slowly.

"What the hell is she doing?" Sam breathes.

He doesn't get an answer from his brother as such, just a sucked in breath of alarm. "Meg knows where we're hiding out," Dean says harshly. "We have to get back. _Now_."

Almost as he finishes speaking Dean is already up and running back through the store, knocking display stands flying, twisting mid-sprint to snatch up the crutches and his pack. Sam doesn't hesitate, sets off in pursuit, heaving his own bulging duffel up with him. Outside Mira is already in the truck, poised to crank the engine, and Sam spares a second to throw up a prayer of thanks for Bobby's vigilance in spray-painting the sigils that should protect them on the vehicle's hood and doors.

He piles in as the engine revs, slamming the door as they start moving. Mira guns it, crashes them down the street, and then all is pain, a blinding white-out of piercing agony, and his brother's shouts are drowned out by Sam's own strangled whine as he suffers, and—

_—The dogs are barking up a storm, eyes glowing like lanterns as the moon reflects off them, and the door is crashing open._

_Castiel is right there, sitting in Bobby's wheelchair, and he looks up with that bird-like tilt of his head and a puzzled frown, and the black-eyed woman in the doorway smirks, strides over the sigils painted at the threshold as if they aren't even there, and kneels in front of him._

_Something like recognition crosses Castiel's face, and, "You," he whispers. He reaches out as if to fend her off, lowers his brows as he concentrates, and then she's laughing, waving her hand, sending Castiel airborne so that he crashes head-first into Bobby's glass-fronted bookcase._

_As the demon pushes up and turns, there is the blat of a gun, once, twice, three times in quick succession at point-blank range, and the impact knocks her back into the wheelchair. She casts her eyes down to where blood blossoms scarlet across her chest, looks up again and smiles. "Ouch," she says, and she clenches her fist as she lounges there comfortably._

_The movement sends furniture flying and splintering, turning the room into a tornado of its own contents that catches Bobby up in its crazed whirl, spinning him around and around like a rag doll until the demon tires of the sport and flicks her wrist, bouncing Bobby solidly into the wall. His knees buckle as he collapses down onto his butt and flops sideways onto the floor._

_And now Castiel again, and the demon springs out of the chair grinning, prowls up to him, fists a handful of his hair and hauls him upright. Her other hand plays through the air until a vicious shard of glass from the shattered bookcase leaps up into her fingers, and she holds it up to the skin of Castiel's neck as he blinks dazedly at her, presses in until he is choking on his own blood, ribbons of it spilling out of his mouth, and—_

"Sam? Fuck, Sammy."

Dean sounds faraway and desperate, he's slapping Sam's cheek lightly, and they are jostling madly because they're in the truck and on the way back to Bobby's. Sam snakes his hand up, grips his brother's wrist. "Hurry," he gasps. "We have to hurry."

Dean nods. "Are you back? Come on, kiddo, not a good time to flash back. Count with me, twenty, nineteen, eight—"

"Not," Sam grinds out between the pains that lance right through his prefrontal lobe. "Not a flashback." His head must be splitting open, feels like it's about to explode, and he thuds it hard into the window next to him, vaguely hears Mira's cry of alarm at the impact. "Vision," he sobs out through his horror, and he is vaguely aware of his brother's eyes and mouth going comically round with astonishment and disappointment. "Dean… _vision_ ," he stutters again. "Bobby…Cas. Demon. And…no… _oh no, no, no_."

_Vision_.

That can't be, because his brother's visions died with Azazel, but Dean can't dwell on it now because the truck is finally screaming in through the gate, listing onto two wheels, and he can see that Bobby's front door is wide open, the dim light of the oil lamp shining out onto the porch.

"Pull up," he snaps to the woman at his side, and he's tumbling out of the passenger door before the truck stops, knife in his hand, _the_ knife, because it was a _vision_ , even though it can't have been, and his brother's visions were always right. And forget surveillance, forget stealth, forget his own safety; he's doing this quick and dirty because his family is in there, being hurt.

Dean pounds up the porch steps and through the gaping doorway into chaos, upturned furniture, paper, books, as if a hurricane blew through the house. Dead center is the wheelchair he settled Castiel into, lying on its side in the debris, and the familiarity of the image knocks the wind from him in a painful gasp of, "No."

He freezes, captivated for a fraction for a second by the holes torn through its back panel, the blood smeared wetly down the vinyl, before he hears the crunch of boots on gritted glass and he skids himself around so fast he almost loses his feet from under him.

The demon is vaguely recognizable but Dean's eyes range past her and down, to the floor, where Castiel is shifting, groaning and bringing a hand up to his head.

"Oh, don't worry, Dean, he's fine," the woman says dismissively. "I only just got started."

Dean tenses as he pulls his gaze back up to stare at her. "Who the fuck are you?" he growls through the same vague sense of deja vu he felt when he first looked at her, as she starts to back away, and he raises the knife. "How did you get in here?"

She smiles, her teeth flashing white between glossy red lips, and her eyes dance insolently. "Trade secret," she teases, and she's opening her mouth to continue when a melée at the doorway announces Sam, gray-faced but upright and alert. He careens in much as Dean did, eyes darting about frantically, and he almost mows the demon down. She sidesteps gracefully as Sam gasps out names.

"Bobby? Cas?"

"Cas looks okay, I can't see Bobby," Dean says tersely, and Sam detours around him, makes a low sound in his throat. Dean spares a swift glance behind him, sees that his brother is on his knees beside the crumpled form of the old man.

"Is he alright?" Dean snaps. "Sam?"

"He's alright," Sam assures him finally, and Dean switches his attention back to the front, to where the woman is still standing.

Her grin doesn't undercut the contempt in her eyes. "What can I say, I got a soft spot for the old guy," she offers. "I got a soft spot for all of you, actually."

Dean is partway through, "What the fuck does that mean?" when he pulls up, looking at thin air. He doesn't hesitate, turns and flings himself to his knees beside Castiel, who is flat to the boards again and seems out cold, his hairline clotted with blood.

Mira appears behind him from the back of the house, squats and thumbs open the angel's eyes, before gently pushing his hair up and away from the gash. "He's lucky he has such thick hair," she says. "It cushioned the glass. The cut isn't deep, but he'll have a hell of a headache to go with his broken foot."

As she stands and steps around Dean, her boots crunch on broken glass that tells some of the story, and Sam confirms it faintly from his spot beside Bobby.

"She threw him head-first into the bookcase."

Dean's hand is shaking as he lays it on Castiel's cheek, before fixing his eyes on where Mira is checking Bobby's pupils. "We'll have to keep an eye on both of them for concussion," she decides, before exhaling. "That was too close. How did it even get in here? The place is warded."

Sam coughs then, and Dean looks across to see his brother crawling away on his hands and knees to the trashcan, where he retches for a moment before flopping onto his ass and wiping his mouth, his jaw slack. "Fuck. Dean. She killed them both, I saw it all. Cas…she cut his throat and—"

"What the fuck was that?" Dean jumps in hoarsely before his brother can continue, because he doesn't ever want to think of what might have happened if they hadn't made it back here in time. "A vision? You're having visions again? How the fuck is that even possible?"

Sam stares at him for a minute before his eyes drop and his frame seems to slump. He scrubs a nervous hand through his hair, and Dean knows the damn signs well enough to grate out, "You have anything you need to tell me?"

His brother sighs, his gaze darting to points north, south, east and west before he pulls his huge feet back under himself and pushes to a stand. "There's something I need to show you," he says.

"Now?" Dean hears his voice catch a little in his throat, because he can already tell he isn't going to like this any more than the revelation about the vision. "In case you missed it, that demon had a bunch of co-stars with her back in town, and—"

"Please." Sam finally looks at Dean then, with something like desolation on his face. "It's important. It'll just take a minute."

There's a moment when they're all still, and there's a strange buzz of anticipation hanging in the air. Mira glances from Dean to Sam and back again. "I've got this if you're going to be quick," she says. "Let me just get the first-aid kit."

As she maneuvers past Dean, he reaches to the couch, snags a cushion and slides it under Castiel's head. He leans in close to brush his lips across the skin at Castiel's temple, before turning back to his brother. "This better be good," he gravels out wearily.

Dean hasn't been to his grave, even though he has seen it from a distance, loose earth standing slightly proud of the surface under the tree Castiel ripped up for him so long ago. He could tell it had been filled in, assumes Bobby probably did it so his damn fool pack of dogs wouldn't all fall in there, but he has noticed large, solid objects strewn about it carelessly, even if he has shivered and turned away with no desire to look closer.

Now he is looking closer; in fact he's right up in his own grave's personal space, his brother standing opposite, wordless. Sam is slouching dejectedly, toeing one of the unidentified objects; wood, a short strip of lumber, and there are several other similar pieces flung over under the tree.

"What is this?" Dean asks guardedly, because even if they're within sprinting distance of the house he doesn't want to be here, wants to be locked inside, safe behind every ward he can think up, lying under blankets with his lover sleeping in his arms. "What's going on?"

Sam speaks haltingly. "When I figured out what Cas had done, I raced right out here and I dug, like a crazy man." He laughs, and it sounds a little shocked at the recollection. "You know that already. And Bobby wasn't having any of it, but I kept at it, and I dug down as far as this wood."

Dean's trepidation only swells as Sam taps his boot on one of the planks, and he casts his eyes back towards the house, wants to walk way from this. "Look," he starts, "do we have to—"

"Bobby used it to cover you up, and all these small pieces…"

Sam looks down, and Dean can't help but track his gaze even if he is reluctant and unwilling, and his sense of foreboding is growing exponentially.

"All these small pieces add up to the top three feet of strips that were about seven feet long, I guess," Sam continues. "Because I dug down as fast as I could, but it was just me and a shovel, and when I hit the wood, I couldn't lift it up. There was all this earth still, weighing it down. But there wasn't time to dig out all the soil, and I was desperate. So I grabbed it and I pulled. With my bare hands. And I focused real hard. Real, _real_ hard, Dean…and I felt this – surge. Inside me."

Dean's throat goes dry as he slides his eyes down again, notices how all the short lengths of wood are ragged and torn at one end. "Oh…Sammy, no."

His brother goes on, doggedly. "Anger, power. Like before. And I snapped the wood. It wasn't even that hard to do."

Sam pauses then, waiting for Dean's reaction, his eyes dark and watchful as if he's expecting Dean to explode, to tackle him and sink his fist into his face and maybe beat it out of him, like he tried to do before.

All Dean really feels is a dull lack of surprise and a hollow feeling in his belly. "You should have told me," he chokes out.

"I wasn't really sure," Sam tells him softly through the blanket of silence, and he's telling the truth, Dean can hear it in his voice. "I didn't want to think that it was this. I wanted it to just be faith, like Cas said it was. I wanted that so much. But maybe…" He puts his hands out, palm up. "Maybe this is just what I am."

 _She'll revert. It's what she is_.

Mira's words stand out sharp and cutting in Dean's memory as Sam waits for a response.

Dean considers him; sees the boy Sam used to be, earnest and hopeful for better, sees the man who is walking as wounded as Dean is. He's well aware of how Sam's feet fidget and scuff the earth uneasily, how his expression goes even more wary and doubtful, the questions in his eyes more anxious and tentative the longer he waits for a reaction.

 _He'll revert. It's what he is_.

No.

 _No_.

They are both still here because of each other. There isn't time for rage and rejection, there never has been, not really, and Dean buries the whisper of suspicion that curls around his brain. Sam is a man, a man Dean is proud of; and the moment of reflection cuts through his despair and regret, leaving an incongruous sort of calm and acceptance in its wake. "What you are is my brother," he clarifies, quietly but emphatically. "And it'll be alright."

Sam's face falls from lines of strain into relief, and Dean motions him to follow, starts walking back towards the house, eyes alert for movement that might suggest any kind of attack. Sam falls in beside him, not talking. Dean nudges his shoulder against his brother's, clears his throat, asks, "How's the head?"

"Better. A little better anyway. I'll take something."

"Mira know about all that vision crap?"

After a disconsolate huff, Sam says, "Not in any detail. It was so long ago. She knows most of the other stuff."

Dean nods, speeding up now as they reach the porch steps, and his heartbeat quickens as his mind jumps ahead to the scene inside. "We need to talk about this, how to handle it. Figure out why it's happening again."

"I know."

Sam still sounds a little subdued, but Dean skips on. "But first we need to deal with this mess, work out how the hell that thing got past the wards. Any clues about that in the vision?"

Sam hums, reaches up to scrub a hand through his hair. "No, all I saw was…" He trails off, slows down a little, and Dean glances to his left to see his brother is chewing his lip thoughtfully.

"What?" he prods.

"Cas, he – in the vision, he looked at the demon, and he said, _you_." Sam frowns. "He knew her. I'm sure of it."

It makes no sense but it rings alarm bells inside Dean as he strides in through the door, because the demon had looked at him like she knew him. Bobby is conscious and sitting up on the couch, an icepack pressed to his head and he grimaces at the question in Dean's eyes.

"Head feels like a mule kicked it, but I'll live."

"Did you see how she got in?" Dean asks as he drops to his knees on the floor. "Did Cas let her in?" He slips his hand under Castiel's head, lifting it off the cushion so that it rests on his thigh instead, brushing Castiel's hair away from the patch of gauze taped to the cut on his brow.

Bobby throws him a quizzical look. "Why would he let her in?"

Dean casts his eyes over at his brother before taking the leap. "Sam says that in the vision it seemed like Cas knew her."

The reaction is as aghast as he expected; a high-pitched, squawked out, " _Vision_?"

Dean lifts a weary hand up, placating the old man as best he can, says, "Look, not now, okay? Did he let her in?" while he tries to ignore Mira's sharp gaze from him to Sam and back again as she roots through her bag of medical supplies.

Bobby's face creases in bewilderment. "I got no idea…she was already in here when I showed up." He tugs at his beard, and his face goes thoughtful. "Could he know her from when he was in cahoots with Crowley?"

That's a memory Dean can well do without, but he supposes it's a possibility, and maybe the demon knows him from the courtesy call they made to Crowley's mansion to try to force the bastard to hand over his brother's soul. He's pondering it when a small bottle slides across the floor towards him.

"Only one way to find out for sure," Mira tells him. "We need to wake him anyway, in case of concussion."

Dean can smell the pungent odor of the smelling salts as soon as he unscrews the lid, and Castiel's nose twitches with the first sniff. A second pass back under his nostrils has his eyelids fluttering frantically and he jolts to consciousness with a low cry of alarm. "Dean," he slurs as he blinks confusedly, and then his eyebrows tent. "That's…uh. Ammonia. And eucalyptus."

"Easy, tiger." Dean lets the bottle fall to the floor and strokes a calming hand across his friend's cheek. "You need to snap out of it, Cas. Okay? Everything's fine…but the demon, Sam says—"

"Ruby," Castiel croaks out dryly. "It was Ruby."

The name hits Dean like the concussive blast from an A-bomb. He feels himself tremble, feels cold wash through him, feels freezing sweat suddenly pearl on his spine and start trickling down the hollow at the small of his back, feels a weakness start up at his center and seep out and through his limbs.

He slants his eyes over to see that his brother's face has fallen into a sort of bleak stupor, and he doesn't even know how he speaks while he's trying to swallow his stomach back down his throat, but he knows the words come out, a little winded because he hasn't taken a decent-sized lungful of oxygen in a full minute. "How. How…how is that possible?"

When he looks back down, Castiel's eyes are wider and cautious, fixed unerringly on him, and Dean realizes he has wound his fingers tight in Castiel's hair at the side, that he's pulling on it, furious, that his rage is charging the air around him as if it's building up to streak out of him like a bolt of lightning, and his lover in the line of fire. He looses his fingers, swallows, lick his lips, and tamps down the desire to holler out obscenities. "How is that possible?" he asks again, softer.

Castiel shifts himself uncomfortably upright in Dean's embrace, his eyes far away and distracted again. "Osmosis," he murmurs. "Osmosis, it's osmosis." He closes his eyes for moment, groans as his breathing speeds up, and Dean has to bite back the sudden horror of what might have been as it hits again.

He pulls Castiel into himself, wraps his arm around him tighter, his hand splayed out where he knows his mark is on Castiel's chest, and he dips his head so he can rub his chin across the top of his friend's head to ground himself. He exhales to steady his voice, glances over again to their audience, three sets of transfixed eyes. "Bobby, do you think it's even possible?" he asks, even though he knows in his gut that it must be because every instinct had screamed at him that the demon was familiar.

The old man throws up his hands. "I don't even—"

"It shouldn't be possible," Castiel cuts in. "But in Hell, Vassago and Gabriel told me that Cthulhu had torn holes between the dimensions, that Purgatory and Hell were seeping into each other, and into the World."

Dean laughs, bitter and humorless. "So what, we're living on the planet Hellgatory? And you're only telling us this now?"

"I didn't remember it until I saw her," Castiel replies, a little testily. "You know things are coming back to both of us slowly."

The angel is squinting a little, as if Dean isn't really in focus, as if he's stoned. _Head injury_ , Dean reminds himself. _Not stoned_ , and never that if he has anything to do with it. He takes another deep breath, tries to calm himself. "Okay. Okay. But how does this link to Ruby?"

"When monsters like her die, they go to Purgatory," Castiel tells him, a little distractedly because he's floating a hand up to pat at his temple and he's blinking even more slowly than before, like it's an effort to keep his eyes open. "And now Purgatory is leaking into Hell. And we know there are ways out of Hell."

Bobby makes a frustrated sound. "So not only did Cthulhu turbo-charge the bad guys that were here already, but now every single one of the sonsofbitches we've ganked could be on the loose?"

 _And this time it's personal_ , Dean thinks, and dread anticipation is curdling his gut again as he meets the old man's frank gaze and then darts his eyes to his brother. "They're coming back, Sammy," he says breathlessly. "All of them. Gordon, Crowley. Fuck… _Alastair_."

The chill of deep, instinctive terror he feels at the possibility makes Dean gasp, and Castiel brings a hand up to grip onto his arm where it crosses his body. But Dean is already joining his line of thought to the next dot, and his senses are prickling with foreboding. "The vision," he says. "When you were having visions before, they went away after we killed—"

"Yellow Eyes." Sam's expression is dark and intense, his tone incredulous. "And now they're back. Jesus."

There is a moment of silence filled with repressed horror, where Dean feels as adrift and confused as he ever has, where he doesn't know what to say or do. He can feel his breathing go irregular and his heartbeat turn staccato, he can hear the blood pulse in his ears. He can see his brother's eyes set on him, Bobby's and Mira's too, and they're waiting for something, waiting for a decision. Time slows down to a crawl, and he can almost see himself, a deer in the headlights, as if he's outside his body.

And then there is Castiel's hand on his arm, pulling him back inside himself with a snap, the squeeze of his fingers dependable and loyal. And trusting, Dean realizes. They're all looking at him with expectation, with the belief that he will think of something, get them out of this, _lead_ them.

And lead them he will.

His faked calm is so steely it surprises even him. "We're out of here," he announces bluntly. "The RV's well-stocked already, just grab what you need and load it up. We'll take the truck too. Sam, you got weapons duty, bedding too. Bobby, if there's any books you don't want to leave behind, get them packed up now."

Bobby is already pushing up, but he pauses, rueful. "We'll be sitting ducks out there."

"We're sitting ducks in here." Dean jerks his head towards the window. "She's out there right now, rounding up Team Free Ruby. And there could be worse than her headed here." Even the thought of _worse_ gets his gut roiling again, and he stops, forces the fear that bleeds through his bravado back into its dark space before it starts spewing like a slashed artery, puts himself back together again. "Just make sure the RV and the truck are properly warded."

There is a tug at his sleeve then, and, "She was a witch, wasn't she?" Castiel murmurs exhaustedly from where he reclines.

"It must be how she got through the wards," Mira offers with a frown. "Spell work."

Castiel pulls on Dean's arm again, stares up through half-lidded eyes, slurs, "Hexbags…to hide us."

Sam thumps the table lightly with his fist at the reminder, suddenly enervated. "She showed me how to make them."

And she did, but even so Dean is skeptical. "You think they're Ruby-proof? They could be her version of catnip."

Sam huffs. "Well…she always needed to call to find out where I was. So maybe they're worth a try."

"Lavender, hemp, chicken bones, and goofer dust." Dean examines the small glass jars spread out on the table, huffs at the sudden memory of Balthazar, his pale blue eyes avid as they scoured Bobby's refrigerator, and echoes the angel's words wryly. "Bobby sure keeps a beautiful pantry."

Opposite him, Sam picks up a small bottle of tiny, pearl-colored pellets and squints at them. "Spider eggs too. Unbroken."

Dean shudders as he spreads the small fabric squares out across the kitchen table. "They won't hatch while we're wearing these, will they?"

Sam smiles wanly. "They didn't when she made them."

Eyeing his brother for a moment, Dean looks for signs, for that chewing on the insides of his cheeks thing Sam does when he's worried, looks for his eyes going distant, but Sam works on steadily, dividing up the ingredients into equal piles on the cloth scraps. "I'm alright," he mutters after a moment of Dean's regard, though he doesn't look up.

"You need to tell me any time you're not," Dean says softly, and Sam does look up then.

"Anything. Headaches, cravings…" Dean trails off and doesn't clarify what he means by that, but the muscle jumping in his brother's cheek signals the message went through loud and clear. "You're already shining at us," Dean goes on neutrally. "You think you might have powered up when you were digging me out of my grave. If what we think is going down is going down, there's no telling what effect it could have."

After a beat, Sam clears his throat. "I'm afraid."

Out in Bobby's lot, standing beside his grave, Dean looked at Sam and saw a man. Now he sees a scared kid, the same scared kid he has tried to look out for and take care of since he stumbled out of their home carrying his infant brother as their mother burned. "Yellow Eyes got mom and dad," Dean whispers. "He isn't having you. Do you hear me? And neither is Ruby."

Sam stares at him for a moment before he sighs. "What about you?"

"Me?" Dean covers, but he knows what Sam is after and sure enough his brother persists.

"Alastair could be out there, Dean. And what he did to you…" Sam breaks off, passes a hand through his hair and Dean can see it's shaking. "He isn't having _you_." Sam's voice is a curious flat calm as he returns to filling the hexbags. "Do you hear me? If I have to take the bastard out the same way I did before, he isn't having you."

If the chill Dean has been feeling wasn't bone deep before it is now, and Bobby creaking past, his arms laden with books and scrolls, is a welcome distraction.

"We're about packed up," the old man declares, with a regretful glance at what's left on his bookshelves as he deposits his pile into a cardboard box on the floor. He looks back at Dean then, points a finger behind him, at nothing in particular. "Got something to show you. Sam knows about this already. It's just in case."

Dean knows what it is the minute Bobby detours around the couch, where Castiel is lying dead to the world, his foot encased in a lurid hot-pink fiberglass cast that makes Dean wince every time he looks at it. Bobby heads for the fireplace, but it isn't his journal the old man pulls out of the hidden compartment this time, so there's that at least, Dean muses. It's a small lockbox, and Bobby flips open the top to reveal a thick roll of banknotes, several passports, and a neat stack of business cards secured by a rubber band. "Like I said," he tells Dean earnestly. "Just in case you ever need them and I'm not around, they'll be here. There's no telling what could happen in the future."

"No," Dean says flatly, while his mind's eye flips through vivid snapshots of exactly that. "There's no telling."

He turns as Bobby starts maneuvering the box back into the hollow space, steps over to the couch and squats down beside it, trails his fingertips across Castiel's cheek, and the angel blinks awake gradually. "Up and at it, soldier," Dean says. "Practice riding your crutches before we head out."

Castiel groans and flinches as he pushes himself up, and Dean sighs through the moment it takes for him to get to a point where he knows he can trust his voice to come out steady. "You need something for the pain?"

Castiel considers Dean for a moment before he replies. "I'll manage. It's just a broken foot. Not the end of the world."

The words are simple enough but they're an iceberg, nine-tenths of their importance, their _subtext_ hidden below the surface, and Castiel's eyes are tired, shadowed with nightmare visions.

Dean manages a tight smile. "No," he says softly. "It's not the end of the world." He leans in to brush his lips across Castiel's. "There's oatmeal keeping hot on the stove. You need to eat."

"And you?" Castiel prods, frowning. "Have you eaten? Rested?"

He is hungry, Dean realizes, even a little light-headed with it; thirsty too. "I'll get a bowl," he says. "I just have to go see something first."

Outside is cold, and Dean's breath puffs out warm on the frosty air. In the back of his mind he supposes that Ruby could be lying in wait for him but he isn't really sure if he cares, and some small part of him wonders if he might welcome the oblivion of death at her hands, even if he's beginning to think he may never rest in peace or otherwise without someone waking him.

He stands and stares at his car, his eyes running over her battered carcass. He swallows thickly, thinks abstractedly of the _differences_ his brother spoke of and wonders if leaving his baby here might be another deviation that could change it all.

When he hears the scuff of footsteps, the deja vu is so strong he swings around on a yelped-out expletive, half-expecting his 2014 doppelganger to loom up out of the night and clock him. When he sees who it is he jumps back like a scalded cat, because there's only one angel whose no-fly zone he has any business being in and this isn't him.

"You made it out then," he offers, once he can find his voice. "We weren't sure."

Gabriel ignores the question, just jerks his head towards the battered hulk of the Impala. "You're thinking of leaving her behind, aren't you?"

After taking a second to compose himself, Dean goes for false bravado and counters harshly, "It's not like I have a choice, is it?" And he doesn't, not really, and he isn't going to dwell on the fact that some small part of him wants to walk away from her ruined corpse. "I mean, I can't—"

"Know what I think?"

Gabriel's eyes are gleaming bright with something Dean damn well hopes isn't mischief. "Enlighten me," he says reluctantly.

"I think it'd be a big mistake." Gabriel leans to look around Dean, and scrunches up his face in mock sympathy. "Oh, I can see why you would, don't get me wrong. Ghost of 2014."

Dean feels a flare of anger sear through him again. "You know about that?" he snaps instead.

"Hive mind," Gabriel trips back easily. "And I was banging the same drum as Zachariah there for a while, don't forget." He airquotes, "Play your roles," before flapping his hands up and out. "Anyhoo. You think walking away from her can change the future, give you that easy ending wrapped up in a bow. But don't make the mistake of thinking geography makes a difference. It isn't where she is. It's _what_ she is."

Dean snorts. "Which is?" He doesn't really know what he's expecting to hear, but he definitely isn't expecting the mocking tone in the angel's voice to suddenly turn melancholy.

"Home. Family. A symbol of everything you hold dear, everything you love." Gabriel tilts his head, his eyes narrowing to serious. "And that other Dean let her rot, let all of that rot. Are you going to do the same?"

Stung by that, Dean huffs out his annoyance. "Exactly how am I supposed to—"

"Mind you, fixing her…man, it'd be a chore." Gabriel studies the car, hisses through bared teeth. "Now, I could do it for you. I've been back upstairs, I'm fully charged. I could make her mint, make her look like she just rolled off the production line."

There's a second when Dean is tempted, when he thinks it would be so easy, when he imagines himself tooling out under the gate of Bobby's lot for one last time, _in fuckin' style_ ; and the picture is undercut with sheer wrongness, for some reason he can't fathom. But before he can reject the offer or even make the decision that he will, Gabriel starts in again, like he's reading exactly what's on Dean's mind.

"But this is your fate, something _you_ have to work at. All of you. Don't just sit there and take it, be proactive. This is your redemption, kiddo. So use some of that free will you love so much to make sure it plays out different from what Zachariah showed you."

A whole _what the fuck?_ cascade of thoughts explodes in Dean's mind at the angel's words, and he has to cast his mental net wide to snag his disbelief, his dismay, his disappointment and his derision, and gather them all into something vaguely coherent as whatever adrenaline high has been driving him for the last few hours finally crashes and burns.

"Redemption?" he asks, and he can hear the raw, bitter edge of resentment in his tone. "This world is screwed sideways and dry because of me, because I didn't kill that thing when I was supposed to. I screwed it all up, like I always do. And you call—"

Gabriel cuts him off with an exasperated clucking sound. "This world is still here. It's different, and it's harder, but it's something to be going on with. And, hey – what doesn't kill you makes you stronger."

Dean can feel his blood pressure spiking even higher as Gabriel speaks, and he finds he's having to subdue the desire for fast, savage violence, the urge to let rip a right hook into the angel's jaw even if he knows the blow would likely shatter his hand. "And you call this my redemption?" he continues, caustic and uncaring if it gets his ass smited. "Is that some kind of fuckin' joke?"

Gabriel's eyes are oddly knowledgeable in a way that makes Dean wonder if this angel can get inside his head too, see all the crap that is laid and overlaid in there. And maybe he can, because he puts up a hand as Dean starts to burst out another bitter protest, and his tone goes abruptly menacing, like he's crossing the threshold of his tolerance.

"You finished what you started. Better late than never." Gabriel pauses then, contemplates Dean for a few seconds, and then awards him a cheerful, lopsided grin that is at odds with his previous coldness. "You gave yourself, for us. You paid the price. And down there, you were worthy."

All it does is spark that same pang of confused need to know, to remember that this time it was different, that he didn't grow a yellow streak a mile wide down his back. "I was _worthy_?" Dean chokes out. "All I can remember is being shit-scared. All I can remember is running away and hiding."

Gabriel tilts his head, so like Castiel, rocks back and forth on the balls of his feet for a moment, and Dean sees something he never expected to see in this angel's eyes. It's sympathy, and before Dean can react, can reach his hand up to deflect the touch, Gabriel's hand is streaking out and up, fingers extended, and Dean is—

— _jump-starting into motion, hurtling through time and space unfettered, like a comet, until he comes to a skittering halt in the memory of Hell and he sees the Beast._

_It is made of flames, its orange-red glow reflecting off the sword in Dean's hand, and its lipless mouth is stretched out like a jagged horizon line, its teeth bared to swallow Dean whole. Beyond it, Dean sees Castiel, struggling frenziedly in his brothers' arms, fighting to follow Dean into the fire, his eyes molten but his face set serene with intent._

_There is a shout, "light the sword, Righteous Man," but it rings meaningless through Dean's fear-muddled head, for the Righteous Man is long dead and buried in the feral half-demon creature he is now, running from shadow to shadow and rock to rock, the heat of the conflagration burning holes into him. He is a tattered, terrified primitive, a sword slapped into his hand as though any part of him could rise up from his atavism to understand what he was meant to do._

_"You don't have to be the Righteous Man, Dean. You can be your own man. It will be enough…"_

_With those words, something significant, something sentient, floods back into what remains of him. It reawakens a vague recall of his human self, fractured and worn away to trace elements by centuries spent lost in the Lake of Fire; reawakens a dormant memory of love too, and he remembers that he always defined love by action, not words. When he carried Sam from the burning building, it was love. When he spent night after night scouring the land for his father, it was love. When he sold his soul to bring his brother back, it was love. His damnation was proof of love. And his redemption from Hell was love, a love that will gather the broken fragments of his soul together and bring him home again as it did before; and as Dean realizes this and remembers, the scalding flames of Hell blur into the warm, peaceful glow that radiated from the angel who gripped him tight and raised him from Perdition._

_It isn't anger that surges from Dean's heart through his arm and into the blade. It is love, the elemental spark that soldered an angel's grace to his soul, and for a moment it unites them in a ring of blinding light and thunder, a flash that shines bright over the darkest planes of Hell, silencing the distant cries of demon-things loping through the desolate landscape._

_"You can be your own man…"_

_There is no ending this on a sobbed out yes and a demon blade pressed lovingly into his hand. He will take up this sword and fight, and go down fighting if he has to, and as Dean's mind forms the thought, the sword bursts into flame. He has no time to marvel that it doesn't burn, because it feels perfect and balanced in his fist as he turns to face the monster and says, "No."_

_He is his own man, and he's going to cut a path into the center of this thing and drive it back into the dark, to end the hurt, to end the pain; and when he is finished, he's going to have the fucking thing stuffed and mounted, and he's going to give it Castiel as a fucking birthday present._

_He senses a shared inhalation from the angels, as though they pool together an invisible strength, and he siphons it from them with a breath, uses it and is intoxicated by it, as he drives forward and sinks the sword into the monster. He cauterizes its evil with love, and it throws itself forward into the path of the blade as though it has been waiting for this, as though it has been expecting Dean and dreaming of this moment. And Dean realizes that this is what the monster has wanted all along: rest. Peace, and in his confusion and his guilt, he could not intuit it, could not comprehend the hurt inside the monster; the hurt in every monster, including his own self._

_The blade cuts deep and flames erupt and buffet outwards in a howling wind that rises up like a tornado. Dean feels the crushing embrace of Castiel's arms, yanking him out of the blaze as it detonates, plucking him from the whirlwind, and the backdraft scatters them like kites cutting away into the wind. Dean is boneless and delirious with the power of the sword, the knowledge of what it is like to be an archangel, to be Michael, the one who is like God. He isn't afraid anymore; he laughs wildly in Castiel's arms, even if they are to be lost here in perpetuity, for there is no fear. Why should there be? No matter where he ends up, he will just start over. He will plant his flag in the land and declare it his kingdom, even if that kingdom is Hell, and make it new, in his name, in his image—_

"Careful, there," a voice is saying, its tone sing-song and mocking. "That sounds an awful lot like God to me. That's what too much angel mojo can do to you if you don't know how to hold it—"

"Jesus."

Dean comes back to himself off-kilter, dizzy and dazed, one hand on his car and the other, his right hand, held out in front of him. He looks at it as he swallows back his gasp and tries to get a hold of his racing heart and breath, the hand that held Michael's sword and slew the Beast, and he flexes his fist, thinks of sanctified fire, a fire that does not burn. "I was worthy," he marvels in a whisper. "I was in control. I was myself. And I ended it."

When he looks up, Gabriel is watching him, smiling in a way that seems genuine, maybe even affectionate, his sharp features softened. "You saved us all, Dean," he says again. "You faced down the monster and you said no. And so, we're redeemed. All of us. Including you. And here…"

The angel snaps his fingers, and suddenly there are four wheels and a car door lying on the ground a few feet away from Dean, along with a motley pile of smaller metal parts. "Didn't say I wouldn't give you a head start," Gabriel offers, and he folds his arms and smirks. "Call it an apology for all those Tuesdays."

Dean doesn't thank him, doesn't thank him for the memory, vision, flashback or whatever it was either, because he somehow knows his thanks is unnecessary and out of place. "Will it work?" he asks instead. He's not really sure if he wants to hear the answer, but he plows on regardless. "Are there enough differences? Will it change anything? What Zachariah showed me…" He has to stop as his voice runs dry and cracks on the vision of his brother but _not_ ; Lucifer, his soft tone dripping contempt. He pulls his control back. "Lucifer told me that no matter what I did, no matter what details I altered, we'd always end up there."

Gabriel shrugs. "Lucifer is in the cage. So there's that."

It's an answer, Dean supposes, but at the same time it isn't. "Until one of his demon drones decides to let him out again," he retorts. "Or one of you guys does."

"Always in motion is the future," the archangel bats back amiably, and his slight frame is already tensing in the way Castiel's does before he takes flight. "We'll drive off that bridge when we get to it."

"What about Cas?" Dean blurts out, just as the air starts to bend. "In the future he was fallen, human. He was…" _Hapless, hopeless_ , and the memory hurts Dean as much as his recall of how the devil studied him so clinically through his brother's eyes. "Will he lose his grace?" he manages. "All of it? That other Cas said it was because the angels flew home and pulled up the ladder."

Gabriel pauses, considers Dean for a long moment before he responds. "He won't ever be what he was. He'll hurt, he'll get sick. If he chooses to stay here, he'll age. But we aren't going anywhere, so he won't lose all of it. I'll see to that."

"What about—" The sudden thickness in his throat squeezes the words back down for a second, before Dean swallows and forces them back up and out of himself, even if the thought of what the answer might be terrifies him. "What about the end? What happens to him? He has no soul, and even if he's still got some of his grace, he'll be fallen. A traitor, and—"

"He's not headed back to the Lake of Fire," Gabriel says. "He's redeemed, like we all are. At the end, you'll be together."

It's said with a gentle openness Dean didn't see coming at all, and the gratitude he feels swell inside him is pathetic, but he doesn't honestly give a shit. "Thank you," he croaks, before he carries on, a little breathless. "And is it true? About the planes bleeding into each other?"

On a sigh that seems like genuine regret, Gabriel nods. "It looks that way."

"What can we do about it? Is there a way to stop it, to reverse it?" Dean ignores how the angel's features fall into seriousness, presses him again. "There's always a way, isn't there?"

Gabriel gives him a measured look. "Where there's a will."

 _Jesus_ , Dean thinks, and it's an unpleasant reminder of this angel's modus operandi. "Cryptic much?" he snaps before he can help himself.

The angel stiffens, his nostrils flare a little, and he bristles obvious annoyance. "I'll be in touch when I know more."

He half-turns, shoulders going taut again. It reminds Dean that there is no real trust here and there might even still be some dislike, but he doesn't let himself be intimidated. He takes a step closer, says, "We're pulling out of here, tonight. And we'll be warded against everything we can think of, including you guys. So – Swan River wildlife refuge, Montana. Hunter camp near Flathead Lake. That's where we're headed. That's the plan, anyway."

Maybe Dean is doing it for when the angel _knows more_ , or maybe he's doing it for Castiel, he doesn't really know, but Gabriel nods slowly, so Dean keeps going. "What will you do?"

The grin that flashes back at him is sly. "Use my time more wisely than before."

He's gone then, in a flurry of dust.

Dean looks at the air the archangel filled for a moment, runs Gabriel's words through his mind a couple more times, before he packages them neatly and ships them out to the Nome, Alaska of his brain so he can focus on something he has some degree of control over. He shuffles over to the haphazard collection of metal Gabriel left behind, toes it with his boot, and then glances at his car. Out of nowhere, it occurs to him that her curb weight is four thousand, three hundred forty pounds or thereabouts, and he slants his eyes over to the two-ramp trailer Bobby keeps parked in the lot and sighs. "Could have loaded her up for me," he grouses. "Douchenozzle."

He's making his way back towards the house when he scents the demon's sulfur taint, and a split second afterwards he feels the same twitching feeling between his shoulder blades that he felt the first time she snuck up on him, in a motel parking lot three months before his deal came due.

He turns, and she's leaning on his baby's remains, waiting. She pushes up and takes a few steps away from the car as he approaches, her teeth flashing white as he slows to a stop and they face each other.

There's a skitter of nerves at the base of his spine, but Dean forces himself to ignore it. "Pretty risky," he notes, "showing up here when there's an archangel flapping about up there."

She puts a hand up to her neck, hooks a small cloth bag on a cord out from under her shirt. "It's the extra-crunchy kind."

Dean didn't really need the confirmation, and he doesn't dwell on the paradox that is his brother sitting in Bobby's kitchen, carefully preparing the same small cloth pouches that might just wipe them off her demonic radar once they hit the road.

He came out here prepared, and he reaches behind himself to ease the Colt out the back of his jeans, even though he knows she will vanish if he does so much as raise it. "Push my buttons," he dares her. "I will go off like a Patriot fuckin' missile, and I will take you out."

She studies him, her expression bored. "You can send me back to Monsterville as often as you like, Dean," she replies casually. "It might buy you some time, but there are so many paths now and you can forget immigration control. I'll be crawling out of there and skipping through Hell to the nearest exit before you know it. And then I'll be coming for you, when you least expect it. I'll toss you back down into the Pit so fast you won't know what hit you, and as for Sam…"

She smiles almost fondly, and some tiny, detached part of Dean's brain notices that she's pretty this time round too, that she's gone for that sultry, dark look his brother seems to have leaned towards since Jess died, and he wonders if that's why she chose the body she's wearing. The thought of her anywhere near Sam is enough to unbalance him for a second, and he has to take another one to breathe through it, to regain his equilibrium and make her his mission. And he does it, because this is about control and he's taking that back, just like he did down in the Pit when he used the sword.

"Oh, you'll be coming for me?" he taunts, his voice dangerous. "Well take a number and wait in line. You don't faze me…not you, not Yellow Eyes, not Alastair. You give me purpose, and fuck knows, I needed it. You give me clarity. You remind me why I'm here, which is to hunt and kill as many of you sonsofbitches as I can." There is a sterility in the pure bloodthirst that sweeps through Dean at the realization, and it hits him then, the sheer irony of the fact that her rebirth doesn't matter. Only his own does, and he gives a wry chuckle at how ridiculous and perfect it is. "The family business…and that fucked-up world out there? That's my killing field as much as it is yours."

He cocks his head, revels in the satisfaction he feels as her expression betrays a flicker of unease. "So you can toss me back down into the Pit as often as you like," he continues, wickedly soft. "It might buy you some time, but I'll be skipping through Hell to the nearest exit before you know it. And then I'll be coming for _you_. When you least expect it."

He swings the gun up, squeezing the trigger, and like he knew she would, she flickers and is gone before the hammer clicks on the empty chamber.

The world is on fire.

A '76 Pontiac Firebird purrs downs the broken pavement of an old county road that cuts through fields of burning corn and wheat. No one knows who set the fires but they turn the sky from red to orange to yellow to pink.

The man at the wheel of the car doesn't drive her like a sports car, he does her good, like a Sunday ride, like the world isn't going up in flames around them all, like his straight course isn't blocked every now and then by a stumbling figure made of fish scales and sucking lips, or by some warped, grotesque nightmare-beast that crawled from another dimension to prey on everything in its path. He doesn't let them bother his leisurely road trip, just guns the engine and mows them down, and if that doesn't do the job, he aims the flat snub of his Sig Sauer out the window and fires, adding more color to the post-apocalyptic atmosphere.

He's a happy man, a man at home in a world falling apart. And while he can't say for sure what his destination is, he veers down side roads and back onto main drags as though he knows exactly where he's going, no matter how circuitous the route, straightening the car and making a center line over the double-yellow stripes with reckless abandon.

A crystal angel dangles from the rear view mirror. Every once in a while he taps it and laughs to himself, a private joke between him and the figurine that swings back and forth.

Like he knew it would, the day comes when an improbable hourglass curve of a woman in a red dress appears on the road ahead of him. She walks along the shoulder with a jacket slung over her back, and there's a come-hither sway to her hips that speaks of dances long forgotten, dances that shake it out and shake the world. She's got movements in her to charm snakes and cull fire, and the wind that curls around her lifts the aroma of cardamom and cinnamon from her skin, old-world scents in a new world setting. The man doesn't have to see her up close to know that her eyes are ancient, a testament to the fact her roots are somewhere in the cradle of civilization, or maybe even older than it.

The man pulls past her, swirls the car around in a screech of brakes and a cloud of road dust and rolls down his window, grinning like a boy who can barely contain his excitement.

The woman stiffens, reaches up to pull away the dark veil that hangs over her face like a shroud of smoke, and her lips part like the petals of a flower.

"Need a lift, lady?" Gabriel asks. He gestures with his hand and the car door opens itself to her with a creak of metal and chrome.

Turns out, it's just the ride she's been looking for.

The shattered word they find themselves driving through is no real surprise, because Dean has seen these derelict, burnt-out buildings, looted storefronts, abandoned cars and deserted streets before. The barbed-wire National Guard Checkpoint Charlies they encounter at regular intervals as they journey are no surprise either; nor are the armored personnel carriers patrolling the smaller towns along the route, where a scattering of real live people, who stare at them with crazy eyes, still eke out an existence in the new world alongside the funeral pyres where the bodies of their dead friends and relatives burn.

Outside of Rapid City they get pulled over by a platoon of trigger-happy airmen running guerrilla ops out of Ellsworth Air Force Base under a commander who's gone totally Kurtz, and they spend a tense half-day trying to convince him they're harmless civilians who just happen to be packing an armory with them as they travel. Dean lock-picks his way out of his cell at two in the morning and breaks the rest of them out within ten minutes, but Sam takes a slug in the right shoulder as they high-tail it out of there. Mira digs it out of him in Rufus Turner's cabin, while Dean holds his brother down on the same mattress where he first turned to Castiel and reached out in the darkness with love in his heart.

Over the border and into Wyoming, they meander through a landscape gone barren and lunar, where sudden downpours turn the road into glutinous tire-sucking mud that threatens to bog them down. One day a fog rolls in, so thick their vehicles labor to cut a path through it. It clears just as abruptly to reveal they are tracking along the lip of a sheer, giddying abyss that shouldn't be there; a jagged Rift Valley of a crack more than two-hundred feet wide and dropping into endless black, that winds on into the distance and belches steam and smoldering ash. After a couple of miles they get detoured all the way down to Cheyenne by wary marines who don't look old enough to shave, and who point at signs that read _quarantine_. When one of the kids throws a fifty-one-fifty and starts screaming about monsters and zombies crawling out of Hell, his own sergeant shoots him on the spot.

They press on westward, through a landscape changed into something off-world and marked by more nooks and crannies that split the earth's surface and vomit red-hot lava. The atmosphere is heavy with sulfur and a sense of dread that makes the dogs whine and huddle together in the truckbed.

They strike lucky on I-80 when they come across a deserted gas station with a Shell tanker parked on the forefront, its door swinging open and its driver's half-eaten body nearby, gun still gripped tight in his hand. They fill up, top up their supplies and veer north again, towards Kemmerer, and then northwest into Idaho. They keep to the back roads, where it's quieter and there are no troops at all, but the land still yawns wide open at them from time to time, and Dean shivers to think of what might have crawled out of the sinkholes.

Some of the small towns they drive through as they head north still have electricity for a couple of hours a day, even if there are hardly any people left. Roach motels that used to charge thirty bucks a night but now cost five hundred loudly advertise hot running water instead of free wi-fi, and they throw caution to the wind and check into a couple along the road. As soon as the door closes behind them and the wards are laid, Dean slams Castiel up against the wall, and they feverishly tear at clothes, purr their lust and their love into each other's mouths, wrestle each other into the bathroom and under the showerhead. There is no constraint, only want and need; soap-slippery bodies and straining cocks, fingers and tongues on each other and in each other, the air going steamy and muggy while they render each other shivering and useless, before Dean contritely helps Castiel hobble out to the bed.

It's just under four weeks before they grind up the track to the camp, at dead of night.

The moonlit sign over the gate chills Dean, but he sets it aside, mentally vows to climb up there first chance he gets and paint the letter S over the letter C. Catching a glimpse of Risa, her eyes narrowed and suspicious as they drive through the front checkpoint, is no real surprise; and neither is Chuck, clipboard in hand as he waves them along rutted mud-tracks to a group of three wooden cabins towards the back of the fenced compound.

"How's the toilet paper situation?" Dean asks him dryly as he debarks the truck, and Chuck blinks confusedly at him.

"Uh. Under control."

"You should start stockpiling that stuff. Just in case."

Chuck frowns. "Yeah," he mutters, and he jots it down on his list. "You never know."

"Nope, you never do," Dean says.

But even alongside the depressing deja vu familiarity of the place, it turns out there are some surprises. Jonas Harper is one of them, striding up to greet them, and the prospect doesn't bother Dean in the slightest, because he's never letting go of Castiel and Castiel is never letting go of him. He shakes the man's hand, pulls him into a businesslike embrace, and claps him on the back. "Good to see you here, my friend," he says, and he means it.

The high, thin cry he hears as Castiel gingerly eases himself out of the passenger seat of the truck is another thing Dean didn't expect, along with the slightly built figure who is racing up through the trees ahead of Jody Mills, and hurling herself at Castiel. Claire Novak, and Castiel enfolds her in his arms, kisses the top of her head. When he looks up at Dean, his cheeks are shining wet.

"Missouri told her we were coming," he whispers to Dean, after Mills guides Claire back through the camp. "Her mother is here too," he adds, and his eyes are astonished.

There is a second where Dean thinks of warm brown eyes instead of Pacific blue, of soft curves instead of angles and solid muscle, when he remembers baseball games, barbecues, and yardwork; and the memories tighten his chest. He tamps them down, focuses on the fact Amelia and Claire Novak are a difference and he still wants to think that maybe these differences mean something, even if Gabriel left him in the dark on that.

On the morning after they arrive, Dean wakes at six-fifteen. He's warm, comfortable, and the drape of Castiel's arm across his belly is heavy and reassuring. He feels safe for the first time in weeks, and he savors the knowledge that there is a camp full of hunters outside, that he can relax his guard and just _be_ , for a while at least.

It's dead quiet but for the steady breathing next to him, and after Dean's eyes adapt to the gloom he spends a few minutes gazing at the rough pine beams overhead before he twists his head to watch Castiel sleep, studying the thick black fringe of his lover's lashes, the line of his jaw, his loose-limbed unconsciousness. He slides stealthily out from under Castiel's arm, and then out of their bed after that brief benediction, pulls one of the blankets with him and pads into the bathroom to take a leak before sneaking outside, still bareass naked under the fabric.

The sun is just rising, but it's light enough for Dean to scope their surroundings as he stands on the porch. Spruce trees surround them, their dark green foliage a reminder of his own tree, back in Sioux Falls; and there is a cluster of smaller cherry trees to the right. Through their branches, in the distance, he can see the lead-gray lake, bordered by the Salish Mountains on the western horizon, and he admires them for a moment, muses that this place feels oddly peaceful, that he feels safe.

Smoke is rising up in plumes from the chimneys of some of the other lodges, and Dean makes a mental note to shove a couple of logs in their own stove before he crawls back into bed. Their own cabin is set back, surrounded by grass and shrubs that remind Dean of how he helped Castiel plant seedlings in Missouri's garden. She's here somewhere, he knows, and he grins at the thought that she's probably known they were on the road and headed this way for days.

His gaze tracks to the bones and moldering skin of his car then, where she languishes on the trailer Bobby and Sam helped him load her on to before they pulled out of Singer Salvage for the last time. It's _what_ she is that matters, and, "I will fix you," he pledges.

"We'll fix her together," Castiel says from behind him. He's yawning as he steps up behind Dean and leans in to nuzzle at the back of Dean's neck, but he's wide awake lower down, and Dean can feel the jab of his dick as it pokes inquisitively at his ass through the blanket, feel the vibration of Castiel's lips as the angel growls possessively into his nape.

Dean turns with a grin, opens his arms wide, and wraps Castiel in a blanket-warmed embrace. He feels his own semi hard-on throb as it collides with the hard bone of Castiel's hip, and there is something in Castiel's eyes right then, a softness that makes Dean feel suddenly shaky with want, makes his heart do a swooping barrel roll inside his ribs. "I feel like I'm exactly where I was meant to be," he says, impulsive. "With exactly the person I was meant to be with."

Castiel's eyes widen in response, his mouth curving into a smile that looks delighted. And they haven't, not since before the Beast; but now, here, with the future opening out ahead of them, Dean wants it, wants to be _past him_ , because that Castiel had liked _past him_. He leans in, snatches at Castiel's lower lip with his teeth. "I want you inside me," he murmurs. "I want you to—"

 _Shut the fuckin' door_ , comes bellowing in from outside, followed by raucous hooting and cheering.

Dean jumps a foot off the ground, whirls at the same time as his blanket falls away, to see Risa and a couple of burly, bearded guys spectating through the wide open door from ground level. Risa's eyes go round as her gaze drops down to Dean's crotch, and she nods in approval and gives him a thumbs-up sign.

Dean vaguely thinks she's never getting near his dick, _fuck, no_ , because his only connection is with the man behind him, and then Castiel is laughing, swinging him around and slamming the door on their audience.

Castiel clumsily bustles Dean back to tumble them onto the bed, where the early sunlight is playing weak gold rays across the quilts, and he starts to rain kisses down on Dean until Dean squirms, before he rolls them so Dean is above him. He clamps his hand to his mark on Dean's shoulder and stares up then, eyes brilliant, hair mussed chaotically, mouth wet and flushed, and the line of his cock like steel along Dean's belly. He blinks slow enough for it to be flirtatious, even if Dean isn't sure if it's consciously so, hooks one leg around the back of Dean's thighs and grinds up into Dean, humming a sweet note of obscene pleasure as he does. "You should lock the door," he suggests.

 _Hell yes_ , and Dean scrambles up and away, almost sprints back to the door to throw the bolts across, top and bottom. He swivels back around, and for a moment he's lost in appreciating his lover's body; his long, muscled form spread out diagonally across the bed, one leg bent and his good foot braced on the bed end, his dick bobbing lazily in Dean's direction as he waits. Dean doesn't suppress his low wolf-whistle, and Castiel pushes up onto his elbows, his expression quizzical.

"Are you coming?" he asks, and Dean smirks.

"I will be."

Castiel studies Dean, his gaze as calculated as if he's taking Dean's measure, and any remaining subtlety is gone as he reaches down to grasp himself and strip his cock once, twice, three times, slow and deliberate, while he licks his lips. It's debauched, and Dean corrupted this angel of the Lord himself, and _fuck_ , he feels a sharp throb in his own dick as his face splits in a smile he can't help. "Horny little bastard," he notes appreciatively. "You're damn lucky I love your cock."

He pads back to the bed, crawls up as far as he has to, leans down and seals his mouth around Castiel, smirking at the angel's whimper as he slaps the flat of his tongue under the ridge and suckles so hard he tastes salty droplets. He pulls off with a pop, presses a gentle kiss to the tip, looks up to where Castiel is blinking hazily at him, and grins. "I packed the tattoo gun," he says huskily. "I love this cock so much, I'm thinking to tattoo property of Dean Winchester along the side."

Castiel's eyes widen and Dean chuckles, swallows him down again. Teeth, a blunt scrape along the spine, thick satin-smooth hardness in between Dean's lips, and Dean will never get tired of this kind of worship. He exhales as he swallows Castiel as far as the root, the head butting up against his soft palate. Castiel's fingers card convulsively through his hair and he starts making shallow thrusts, uncoordinated and jerky. The taste, the smell, the heavy, full feel of Castiel on his tongue, and the steady, needy keening Dean can hear from the other end of the bed are intoxicating and so erotic Dean's own dick throbs painfully, but he holds off his lust. He slides his fingers back behind Castiel's balls and into the cut of his ass, back and forth, keeps mouthing and sucking at his friend's cock, relishes it until it swells succulent and surges up aggressively.

A garbled cry signals Castiel's release and warm, brackish fluid hits the back of Dean's throat. He drinks his fill for a moment, until he is hauled up and Castiel is licking into his mouth, a savage, forceful kiss that abruptly turns to a slow, reverent brush of lips and curving, twisting slow-dance of tongues that lights sparks in Dean, makes his chest tighten and his heart skip. He doesn't want to face the world, wants to hang onto this for as long as he can, so, "We should call in sick today," he murmurs. "Stay in bed. We have coffee, soup in those cans. We'll tell Sam and Bobby we're infectious. Quarantine ourselves for their own good."

Castiel hums, stretches like a lazy cat underneath him, and his fingers trace an idle, meandering path up the ridges of Dean's back. "I take it sex is the cure?"

Dean smirks. "Your dick is sick. It'll be needing the kiss of life. Frequently."

"But you're not really going to tattoo it are you?"

Partway through nipping at the hinge of Castiel's jaw, Dean snorts. "Trust me. I got a steady hand. You know that already."

Castiel's hand is spread on Dean's right ass cheek, his fingers massaging into its curve. "I do trust you," he says thoughtfully. "It's just that—"

"How much?" Dean asks him, pulling up to fix his friend with a stare.

Raising an eyebrow a little suspiciously, Castiel tells him, "Considerably. But…possibly not _that_ considerably."

But Dean has already moved on, and he curls his lips up into a sly smile. "I got a better idea anyway."

In Dean's back pocket he keeps a blue kerchief; it's the sort of thing that's just a staple of life, useful for wiping motor grease off his hands or lighting a Molotov cocktail in a pinch. He keeps them in the glove box and the trunk and in jacket pockets. The one poking out of the careless puddle of denim his jeans make on the floor next to the bed is clean, and he reaches down to hook the corner of fabric and whip it out. He stretches it between his hands before he looks to Castiel. "Do you still trust me?" he asks softly.

Castiel's features are absolutely still, impassive. "Of course."

Dean pushes up to stand, moves to the window, pulls the heavy curtains across to cut the beam of morning sunlight off. He pads back to the bed in the semi-darkness and knees his way up it so that he's back on all-fours and gazing down. He slips a hand under the back of his friend's neck, pulls Castiel up as he leans down for another long, slow slide and press of lips and tangle of tongues, warm and wet and gentle, before he nuzzles his way around to the shell of Castiel's ear. "Let me blindfold you."

Castiel tenses from instinct but Dean doesn't wait for protest, he pulls back, swoops the bandana deftly around the band of his friend's skull and ties the end into a neat, comfortable knot. There is a runnel of sweat now on Castiel's brow, and his throat flexes as he swallows.

"Dean?" he broaches uncertainly.

"I'm here," Dean soothes him, even as he shifts away, plants his feet back on the rag rug beside the bed, and takes a few steps backward. "Just a sec…" He knows Castiel is utterly familiar with his hungry, insatiable nature, knows too that the sudden distance must be confusing, but for Dean it's all going according to plan, and he shivers with a quiet excitement as he concentrates and closes his own eyes from the dark corner of the cabin. "I just—"

"Didn't you go when you woke up?" Castiel interrupts, with the irritable patience he has patented.

Dean snorts. "Not that. Idiot." He drags his voice down to a whisper he hopes is seductive. "Just put your hand over your chest."

Castiel tilts his head, hesitates, and then his hand trails slowly up across his belly and ribs to map his chest, where Dean's handprint marks his skin. His fingers fit into the shallow grooves and stay there.

Dean closes his eyes as he reaches up to settle his palm over his own mark, where Castiel once pulled him from Hell in another lifetime. When his fingers find the outline like a glove, there is a sensation of free fall, of continuous darkness that is meaningless, and for a moment Dean thinks it won't work, that Gabriel lied, that there is nothing left of Castiel's grace and that the thread that linked them frayed and disintegrated with it.

 _Damn you_ , he's thinking at the precise second his flesh tingles; a buzzing sensation in his fingers signaling that something is happening, not only deep in the nerve fibers of skin and muscle, but on another dimension of sensation. In the next second, the distance between where Dean stands and where Castiel reclines recedes as they connect through their scars, and Castiel hisses sharply.

"Damn me?" he asks balefully. "Really, Dean?"

Dean grins, his eyes still closed. "Not you. Never you."

"You should know better," Castiel reproves him. "This is my realm."

Dean's eyes are still closed, his hand still planted over his mark. "I thought it might be fun to experiment with, you know?" he defends. "But I didn't know how much mojo it would take to—"

"Do something like _this_?" Castiel offers, and suddenly Dean feels the hot press of lips against his mouth, splitting his open and seeking the warmth there.

The lips withdraw long enough for Dean to gasp out, and then the ghostly mouth is at his chin, flowing down the angle of his jaw, where the skin is tender and sensitive. Teeth track their way through nips and bites, until Dean is shuddering with it all, gulping in great swallows of air without meaning to. He knows that if he opens his eyes, there will be no mouth there at all, that Castiel will still be on the bed without ever having moved. They need only think of something and they can make it possible through their shared link.

"Yeah," he croaks. "Something like that. One of those weird _you_ things. But, you know, with your tank running on fumes…"

"Shhhhh, love," Castiel hushes him softly. "Picture this cabin. But don't open your eyes, or the link will break."

Dean nods, sets himself to imagining their new home in all of its defects: the knots in the woodwork, the draughty casement windows, the four-pack of toilet paper at the door, and the box of canned and dried foods and MREs beside that, the rat droppings he noticed under the bed from when one made a home there over the winter. Its comforts too – the kitchenette with the old wood stove where Castiel can cook up meaty stews and bake pies, the overstuffed couch in the corner, the thick piled quilts and blankets, and the warm body that will meet and match him there.

"Now, picture the cabin without the roof."

Dean takes the roof apart inside his head one shingle at a time, dropping them onto the ground in the surrounding area, followed by the joists that support the long slats of particle board. He casts each element one by one onto the grass as though a team of day laborers is doing it for a massive roofing job, until the sun pours in and drenches him, so real in his vision that he can feel its warmth and red-golden glow on his face.

He thinks of Castiel and his mind turns to his friend laid out on the bed, his hands behind his head, the kerchief still covering his eyes and his lips curved into a contented smile. Beneath Castiel is a dark-colored down comforter that Dean can't remember having seen before, because it's ripped open and bleeding sable-hued feathers. In the next instant he realizes it's not a comforter at all – it's Castiel's wings, folded behind him. They are faded and diminished compared to how they looked when Dean combed his fingers through them as Castiel rocked his hips and drove himself hard into Dean in the waterfall cave, but still there, despite everything. How much longer he will be able to unfurl them is a question for the future but for now, Dean puts it out of his mind for fear the entire world as they have constructed it together will fall apart.

"You're beautiful," Dean whispers.

Castiel reaches a hand to Dean, beckons. "Come here."

It has the note of order, and Dean grins. "You telling me what to do, now?" He can tell Castiel is rolling his eyes behind the bandana even though his own eyes stay scrunched tight-closed, but his tone is softer and indulgent when he speaks again.

"Do you remember how we joined back in the cave Dean?"

The memory of the pleasure that flashed through every cell as Castiel's light flooded into him makes Dean shiver, sends a delicious thrill of electricity zipping down to the tip of his cock and curling its way around his balls. "Fuck, yes," he replies faintly.

Castiel smiles. "There is so much more we can do. But you have to keep your eyes closed."

There are several seconds of time when Dean is suddenly so sexually excited that his dick throbs almost painfully and all rational thought empties out of his head, but he has the presence of mind to hold his ground in this daydream land supported by their shared link, his mind's eye staring agog as Castiel's grin widens. "More?" he replies, and if it comes out as a raw gasp, he doesn't even really care.

"Human lovemaking is enjoyable because it's physical, Dean," Castiel murmurs. "But that physicality can be limiting simply because it's physical. With this link, we just eliminated all the constrictions of matter, and molecules, and elements. So…do you want to know what it's like to make love without limits?"

Dean feels the breath punch out of him and a scorching flood of heat travels from his chest to his groin, like someone just laid a hot muffler on his belly. He has never thought of the metaphysics of sex and this began as a fun experiment, but it hasn't ever occurred to him that maybe this is the sort of thing Castiel might have fantasized about, that there were other ways to make love, and _holy shit_ he's thinking, _like, more than human?_

"What does that even mean?" he marvels, his eyes still glued shut. "Is this how the angels cloud seed? And won't it wear you out?"

The angel pushes up to sit on the bed, flexes and stretches his bad foot luxuriously before setting it on the floor without a wince, gently tugs the kerchief down and away from his eyes, and leaves it in a loose ring around his neck. "We have time," he tells Dean. "We can _quarantine_ ourselves afterwards. Until we recover."

His wings are still raised up behind him, flaring soft and rippling brown, gray and teal, like a giant hawk's, and Dean can remember how gossamer soft they felt as he carded his fingertips through them, the way Castiel shuddered and moaned as he groomed them, the way they cocooned him and he felt warm, protected. _Safe_.

And that's it. He is _safe_ , and, "show me," he croaks.

Castiel is still there on the bed one second, and then in front of Dean the next and Dean hears the faint echo of his wings beating the air before silence falls. Castiel's eyes make blue circles inside rings of smoky gray, his lashes like charcoal marks on an art drawing.

"Are you afraid?" he whispers.

"A little," Dean concedes.

"There's a part of you that likes that."

"I didn't always," Dean mutters, even if he's aware that Castiel knows. "I didn't _before_."

Castiel tilts his head and Dean experiences a dizzy sensation, a whiffle of air in the still room. He feels as though a hand is caressing the back of his head even though Castiel is in front of him and not even touching him yet; it's like his brain is a file cabinet and Castiel is flipping through inventory cards.

"Find anything?" Dean manages.

"Memories you've forgotten," Castiel confirms, before adding more darkly, "Things you don't want to know."

And with that, Dean senses the mental filing cabinet slamming shut, the clink of steel as the padlock closes, and he lifts his chin, crosses his arms over his chest, defiant. "What is it? I want to know."

"Just your memories of Hell," Castiel confirms, before adding more darkly, "The things that happened to you. They things you did. They are still resonant."

And with that, Dean senses the mental filing cabinet slamming shut, the clink of steel as the padlock closes, and he lifts his chin, crosses his arms over his chest, defiant. "Which ones are strongest?" 

Castiel's features soften. "The memories of the people you tortured." 

Dean closes his eyes for a moment before opening them and looking at Castiel. "Maybe because I need to hold on to those, to remember what happened. To remember what I became. Show me them."

Castiel crosses his arms in a mirror of Dean's own stance, and his wings bristle and flare in what Dean thinks might be frustration. For a long moment, he fixes Dean with a hard stare that makes his caving in all the more unexpected. "I will. But in remembering, maybe you also need to forgive yourself."

Just like a lifetime ago, Castiel raises his hand and pushes two fingers into Dean's forehead. The second they touch home, it feels like a starburst, an engine revving and combusting behind Dean's eyes. Every unwanted memory from infancy to adulthood has been buried there in hidden spaces, in bricked-up nooks and crannies; but they explode out now, and in a fraction of a second Dean discovers the forgotten fragments of himself, for he is a creature of many parts, like his beloved car, restored twenty times over now.

He peers back through the territory of years, through a childhood spent barricaded in sleazy motel rooms caring for his brother while John Winchester was out chasing shadows in the night. He sees himself rocking a fretful infant in his arms, helping a toddler take his first steps, teaching a preschooler his letters using the funny pages, poring over homework with a shaggy-haired tween who doesn't want the life they lead. He sees himself in a field in the middle of nowhere on the Fourth of July, showing Sammy how to light the fuse on a firecracker and run like hell, watching his brother leap and dance under cascading sparks, while Bob Dylan rings out through the night from the cassette player.

He sees himself sitting and watching the door, waiting for the fumbling of the key on the other side, because _goddammit_ , he had wanted a father as much as he wanted his mother, and instead he got a broken shell of man eaten through by revenge, like wood decimated rotten by termites.

 _His real father found him in Hell_.

A new father, a father who knew what Dean needed and knew what he was; knew he was a worthless shit of a man, not a man at all, _less than a man_ even, who couldn't save his brother without fucking that up and selling his soul in the process. This father knew Dean didn't deserve love, gave Dean what he did deserve, and when he was done giving Dean his discipline and his due diligence, he started to take things _away_ from Dean; flesh and bone, dignity, self-respect, sanity, all pared away, in perpetuity.

When his new father had given him every hurt, and stain, and scar he deserved, Dean was ready.

Dean was prime.

Dean was a new animal.

He sees his true self now; a demon crawling from the broken, discarded human chrysalis where he pupated, ready to give back in return, to share what he has learned and hone his skills. His eyes are black pools he sees reflected in his father's eyes each time Alastair leans in for a kiss, and his mouth cracks and splits at the corners with its grin as he circles his rack and cuts deep, slices away the soul's humanity and in doing so, his own. The soul he has nailed there is screaming so loud and hard he can't tell if was man, woman or child, but no matter. They all sound exactly the same whatever they were up in the World, and their sweet song—

His cry rips out of him, louder even than the soundtrack of Hell.

Castiel slaps Dean across the face.

It's all he can think to do to bring his friend back from the shock and horror, as he stands there with his mouth agape and his eyes fixed in a thousand-yard stare. With the sharp snap of the impact, their imaginary world shatters and they are their human and vulnerable selves again, back in the rough wooden cabin, with Dean's hand streaking up to press to the scarlet patch burning his cheek.

"What'd you do that for?" he gasps.

Castiel feels a sudden fury, at Dean, at himself for giving in, because some things are better off kept secret. "You were supposed to remember, not lose yourself in it. There's a difference."

Dean has turned back as Castiel speaks, but he's quiet. One hand reaches up to scratch at his neck while he stares obstinately at the floor and chews on his bottom lip. "They'll be looking for us now," he says finally, haltingly. "All of everything that ever walked the Pit, everything we ever put there…all the souls I tortured down there, crawling back up to the World to end it and end us. Alastair too, maybe." His shoulders slump, and he sighs. "The tab is too big, Cas. Fuck, this is my fault. If I had just held on back then, if I had been stronger, if—"

"No. No you don't."

Castiel is done with Dean's guilt, surges forward almost reflexively. He swallows Dean's words down into himself, a feverish clash of lips and teeth, hands pulling Dean in against him; and Dean is already meeting him, grinding against him, panting hot breath into his mouth as he paints fingerprints down Castiel's spine.

"Never say that, ever," Castiel growls into Dean's open mouth, as he separates them for long enough to suck in a breath and say what he wants to. "You held on. You were strong. It wasn't your fault, any of it. And this is not the end, Dean, it's the beginning. We start over. There is no past in the future…there is no guilt, no pain, no destiny, no God. There's just us, you and I, and now we get to do something about our crimes and our sins…"

Dean groans into Castiel's mouth and his hands are swift and skillful as they find Castiel, hard and hot at his center, eager and wet at his tip. The sensation Dean's touch arouses is all-human, complete with the many autonomous intricacies that Castiel still cannot recover from and struggles to keep up with and comprehend; how his skin flexes and molds and tingles, how it perspires and shivers as Dean strokes and squeezes, how the blood races in his veins and his heartbeat pulses and pounds out of control in his ears, how he craves Dean with a passion that is carnal. This humanity is base and filthy, and all the more glorious for that, and Castiel's need is raw and dark, and when he presses his hand to his mark on Dean's shoulder and leans in to suck at the tender skin under Dean's ear, Dean makes a sound in response deep in his throat.

"I want you inside me, Dean," Castiel breathes into the skin under his lips, and Dean locks tight under his hand, before there is a wild, horrifying flood of more recent memories cascading through their link; of the boat, of frenzied, painfully dry thrusting and Dean's teeth breaking the skin of Castiel's neck as he clung on. It makes Dean flinch, but Castiel's palm is pressed to his cheek then, his head dipping forward until their brows meet.

"You don't belong to Alastair," Castiel whispers, and his mouth is gentle then as it plays across Dean's. "You belong to me. Make love to me. Make love to me, Dean. I need to feel you inside me, like I did then."

It must wake something inside Dean, because he gives a low, rasping cry and spins Castiel around so he faces the cabin wall, his hands spread over the old pine. Dean's fingers are like iron vises gripping the slide of skin over bone at Castiel's hips, and his lips seem to dance everywhere at once across Castiel's skin and down his spine as as sinks to his knees, teeth grazing Castiel's vertebrae as though he could locate a seam he might tear into, one that would open him up to the angel buried inside. His thumbs are sliding across Castiel's ass then, pulling the globes apart, and his tongue is blistering hot as it licks intimately up and down, across and in-in-in, its sharp point slick and torrid. And Castiel _wants_ , as much as he ever has, and he gives himself up to the heat that is searing through his groin, leans back into Dean. But Dean is pulling away suddenly, his fingers falling loose and trembling at Castiel's hips, and from behind him Castiel hears the sound of a choked sob, as though his friend can't bring himself to continue.

"You belong to me, Dean," Castiel reiterates firmly. "We belong to each other."

Dean sighs as though Castiel's rumbling command has snapped something in him with sound alone, severing the bonds of hurtful memory and breaking their hold over Dean the loyal son, the hammer, the obedient student, the demon he became. Just like he did in Hell, as the Beast loomed up to swallow Dean whole, Castiel gives Dean something he has never known – permission to trust himself.

Dean moves behind him and there is a moment of reaching and rummaging, the click of a plastic cap echoing loud in the silence, before a hand snakes around and up Castiel's abdomen to fit itself to the brand on his chest while cool, slick fingertips track their way into the crease at the base of his spine, to the rim of him, his small, tight core. Dean paints a trail there with his touch, spreading the muscle like butter, easing Castiel open carefully with one finger, two, three, crooning and nuzzling at the nape of Castiel's neck as Castiel grits out a needful, "Yes… _yes_."

It goes on for long moments, Dean's fingers insistent, the sting of them subsiding to a dull ache of want, until they slide out and Dean presses himself the length of Castiel, so that he can feel the smooth dome of Dean's cock press at him before Dean hesitates.

"This is where I belong," he whispers.

And then the arrow of Dean is there; solid, iron-hard length pressing up through the flesh, too much, too thick, too full. The heavy drag of it electrifies Castiel in the ecstatic borderline between pain and discomfort that serves as the prelude to pleasure; and still it isn't enough and he hears himself moan wantonly as he pushes back onto Dean, needs to feel every inch of Dean split him apart and plug the wound.

Dean drives in to meet him with a hoarse grunt, and slaps a hand into Castiel's hair, tangling his fingers in it so he can pull Castiel's head back to suckle at his neck while Castiel shudders and adjusts around him. Castiel opens his mouth, and when he does Dean covers it, smothers his cry, and Castiel bites into the webbing of Dean's thumb, licks his way to the delicate skin of Dean's wrist. Dean's other hand makes a path from his chest to his hip, and from there to the patch of dark hair that rings Castiel's straining cock, and he grips the shaft, strips it in a loose fist. The motion tears gasps out of Castiel, as he gazes down at the pad of Dean's thumb rolling languidly up and over the cap, gliding slick through the dew drop at its seam and spreading the liquid across the glossy purple skin there.

"Aren't you afraid of me?" Dean whispers, his breath skittering giddy across Castiel's skin.

Castiel smiles against Dean's palm. "I want it all," he breathes. "All of you. Always."

Dean husks out a possessive sounding snarl that might be Castiel's name, pulls away and thrusts forward, and Castiel feels the golden tap against the inner spot as Dean claims him, thrums with the sensation as it bursts and spasms inside him, and then again, as Dean finds it with purpose and rams into it over and over. The ache of it is blissful, and already the edges of Castiel's vision are blurring, the world gone white-hot as his orgasm swells up and explodes, seismic waves rippling out. He comes with a stuttering cry, his forehead pressed against the wall and his legs shaking, blinks down at the milky liquid that spurts, and coils, and trickles lazily over Dean's fingers. He doesn't have to ask to know that Dean is doing the same, his rhythm faltering and a breathless whine ripping out of him as he pushes forward and expends himself in a last slam-thrust of energy, followed by a flood of liquid heat Castiel can feel pulsing inside him.

Dean slumps against Castiel's back for a moment, breath heaving in and out, mouth damp and slack on Castiel's skin, his arms dangling loose, and aftershocks sending tremors through him, before he presses a row of kisses to the line of Castiel's shoulder and pulls out with a soft hiss. He takes the few steps to the bed in a weary shuffle and flops backwards onto the mattress.

It's Castiel's turn to drink in the sight now, as he knows Dean did when he himself lay there. Dean looks worn out, eyes half lidded as his chest rises and falls rapidly, one arm thrown out across the bed and the other curled loosely across his groin where his cock lies, well-used and utterly spent. "I'm keeping you," he manages, his voice faint with effort. "All of you. Always."

Castiel flicks his gaze down to his own cock, still hard and not at all ready to sink back into oblivion as it bobs enthusiastically, seeking something like the raw, wet warmth it enjoyed earlier. He clears his throat as he moves towards the bed. "I hope you don't think we're done."

"Wha?" Dean groans. "Can't a guy take a breather—"

"Touch the mark again," Castiel says.

Wryly, Dean reminds him, "We went bad places when we did that just now, Cas."

Castiel smiles. "Not this time. I promise."

"Whatever." Dean gives up, too tired to fight it, and the drowsy flop of his fingers on the reddened skin is half-hearted at best.

"Close your eyes," Castiel whispers. "Picture everything as it is now. And—"

_—can you hear me now?_

_Loud and clear. I could fall asleep like this, on the bed._

_Not yet, Dean. Not yet_.

The link between them sizzles with energy Castiel can feel on his fingers as he slides them up over the mark on his chest and settles his weight on the bed beside Dean. His lover moves grudgingly, allowing him room without opening his eyes. Dean's face is tilted up to the ceiling and the light that streams in above the curtains now that the sun is riding higher in the sky burnishes him in tones of pale winter gold. "You are beautiful, my love," Castiel breathes out, and he leans down and kisses Dean as though he were a hummingbird dipping in to drink from a flower. He imagines that the tongue he winnows into Dean's mouth is golden with honey, and Dean rumbles out a laugh as he tastes it.

_You like that…_

_Oh yeah. Think you can bring us cheeseburgers like that too?_

_Don't be so limited. We can do more than that, for the time we have._

_Like what?_

Castiel smothers Dean with another honeyed kiss, and this time he does not relent and give Dean time to breathe. He makes sweeping passes around Dean's palate, sucks at Dean's lips until they swell, nips red marks into Dean's jaw, licks a line down the ligament of Dean's neck. He wraps himself around Dean, closer, _closer_ , until they are inseparable and he is lifting Dean's leg so he can glide purposeful fingers along skin still slippery with semen that turns Castiel's fingers fluid-slick, and all the while Dean clutches at the scar on his shoulder, breath coming fast and heavy.

Castiel circles the puckered indent and nudges in, slowly, carefully, diligently, twisting and circling his finger, bending to swallow Dean's moans. He imagines the crackle of pleasure he can sense inside Dean firing into bursts of electricity that spark through every synapse at once, and Dean responds, thrashing and incoherent, overcome with the tidal wave of ecstasy that threatens to drown him, eyes moving frantically behind his closed lids. Still Castiel gives him no quarter and no relief, only a second finger and a third, as Dean did for him, curling and stroking deep inside until Dean is ready, his cock rigid again and blood-red at the tip, and he's straining up out of the sheets.

Castiel rises to kneel, reaches for the tube of oil Dean had used, and squeezes a pool of it onto his hand. He strips himself, slots in between Dean's legs, and for a moment he holds himself there, watching in fascination as the circle of muscle stretches around the head of his cock to let him in, lipping at him and clinging greedily as he teases it. He rocks back, pushes in again, again, again, seating himself further inside with each gentle nudge.

There is the tight vise of velvet heat Castiel remembers from before, and Dean moans, Dean whimpers, Dean is unfettered in their bed, where nothing has a claim on him but Castiel alone as he coaxes out one golden cry after another. There is the clench and tug of flesh around Castiel, there is friction, chafing, pleasure that strobes through him and makes him growl and unfurl his wings as he did the first time he claimed this right, and he can feel the pulse of Dean's heart through it. Dean flexes up to meet him, fingernails raking furrows across Castiel's backside, furrows Castiel imagines are the bars of the cage Dean locked his heart in, to keep for himself.

"God, Cas," Dean gasps. "Let me open my eyes."

"As you wish," Castiel whispers, and Dean opens his eyes and cries out.

"It's safe," Castiel murmurs. "I have you. I won't let us fall."

While Castiel has been making a ferocious kind of love to Dean, he has been insensate to everything but his euphoria, until the moment he opens his eyes and realizes that they are floating on air, the mattress and its twisted sheets trailing below them into empty space as Castiel's wings beat gently.

"We can make love with the stars, Dean," Castiel whispers, and scrapes a bite into Dean's collarbone as he thrusts in. "You just have to want to go there. Remember how you pictured this cabin without its roof?"

Dean closes his eyes again and gives himself. He shatters, and breaks, and reforms, and Castiel senses the moment Dean realizes gravity is an illusion, that he can break it with a thought in this private world; and in that second, he feels the heat of the sun that drenches them as they rise up, up, into the blue.

"It's not real," Dean whispers.

"No," Castiel murmurs. "It's within our… _innerspace_."

"No one else can see us?"

"Not unless you want them to."

Dean says nothing else, but Castiel covers him with kisses and presses him close so there is no space between their bodies as he finds his rhythm and takes Dean, over and over again, until Dean's body and soul are singing with pleasure, with the golden sun, with the clouds and mist above it, with hidden rainbows in the refracting light of every raindrop, with the moon and the stars. This is the divine geometry interwoven in the world, and when they come, the synergy of the moment threatens the bounds of limitless space.

In the darkness, Gabriel comes awake, and Kali shifts beside him the dark.

"Mmmm, what is it?"

Gabriel smirks. He plants a kiss in her hair and breathes in cardamom, tastes garam masala there.

"Nothing, babe. Some people just don't know how to keep it down, is all."

They come down from the stars in their own time, but Castiel can already feel the stinging pain of his broken foot taking on a fresh resonance with his remaining grace too exhausted to mitigate it. He knows this must be his last indiscretion, this trivial use of whatever latent angelic power he has left, power he should save for an emergency. But maybe that's what love is – a dire emergency, occurring around them all the time, without end.

Dean is draped on top of Castiel, face down and lax, and he clears his throat from deep in the juncture between Castiel's neck and shoulder. "Do you think I can change the future?"

The question is unexpected. It's also resigned; weighted heavy with responsibility, regret, and the residue of old guilt that Castiel knows will never truly recede. "That burden isn't yours alone, Dean," he says quietly. "I won't let it be. It's up to all of us to make sure that future never happens."

After sighing into Castiel's skin, Dean goes on, "This place…someone must be running it all, making the decisions. So maybe I don't have to lead these people. Maybe we can just _be_ here. Without…any of that other stuff."

Castiel traces his fingertip along Dean's spine, etches circles around the notches of his vertebrae. "Maybe," he agrees diplomatically. "But we can't hide in here forever."

"I love you, Castiel," Dean whispers after a brief silence. "So damn much. You make me happy, even if the world is in the shitter. Never change. And never leave me, _never_."

Castiel startles, but he thinks he shouldn't be surprised. He knows this is Dean trying to make sure that future never happens; but it's academic, because he also knows Dean loves him. Dean need never say it, not really, and that faith seems far more important than the spoken words. He doesn't respond in kind, but something comes to him, something he read in a dog-eared paperback he found on Bobby's bookshelves. "You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed," he murmurs into Dean's hair. "I read this in one of Bobby's books. The—"

"Little Prince." Dean kisses the pulse point in Castiel's throat, and Castiel can feel the way his friend's heartbeat speeds up, fluttering against the scar on his own chest as Dean continues. "That's my book." He rolls away onto his side then, tugging Castiel into the concave of his chest, curling his leg across Castiel's bad one in a moment of ill-considered comfort.

Castiel hisses, a flame of agony shooting up his calf. "Careful!"

Dean's eyes go round. "Shit. Sorry, man. But I'm still not letting you get away."

He pulls Castiel close, and Castiel frowns, notes,"It must be very convenient for you."

"That you can't run?" Dean huffs. "You bet I'll take full advantage of that. Too bad Bobby's wheelchair is all messed up, we could have used it."

"I don't think Bobby's wheelchair is the best venue for sex, Dean."

"You're such a pain in the ass, you know that?" Dean chides. "Oh sure, fucking in the stratosphere is perfectly acceptable even if it drains you dry, but you draw the line at a wheelchair?"

Castiel wants to say something clever and effortless, but he discovers that even with a millennia of logic and rational thought at his disposal, Dean trumped his argument in a fraction of a second. Instead, he settles into their tired, sweaty, come-sticky tangle of limbs, gazes into green for a long while, and then he does voice what is in his heart.

"You are the last perfect thing, Dean," he says, tender as a kiss. "And I love you. With all of my heart, with all of my body, with all of my grace. With every part of me, always."

Dean puts his hand on Castiel's face, strokes his thumb along Castiel's cheekbone, his expression gone soft and fond. "Yeah," he says hoarsely. "Yeah. Okay, Cas. That." He brushes Castiel's hair away from his forehead, and then his eyes narrow into curiosity, and a crease forms between his brows.

Castiel knows this look. "What?" he prompts dubiously.

Dean reaches up and pokes at Castiel's temple for a second or two, before Castiel feels a sharp snag of discomfort. He has to pull back, away from Dean's thumb and forefinger as it looms up between them.

There is a white hair caught there, and Dean is entranced by it, turns it this way and that as he studies it, his bottom lip pulled in under his teeth.

"When my grace fades completely, I will grow old," Castiel acknowledges quietly. "It's already starting." He thinks about it for a moment; how he will slow down and become stooped, how his vision will blur and his hearing will muffle, how his joints will stiffen and his bones will creak, how his muscles will soften and waste away, how his skin will grow crepey and fragile.

And his hair will turn gray.

"I had this – I don't know. Call it a dream." Dean's voice is halting as he continues. "That we'd have a home, and that when your mojo was all used up we'd sit on the porch swing and drink beer, and be grumpy old-timers together."

Dean grins a lopsided grin then, and his eyes suddenly shine so bright that Castiel wonders if it might be his last glimpse of Dean's soul before that second-sight is lost to him, along with perpetual youth.

"You'll grow old," Dean echoes him softly. "You'll grow old with _me_."

**THE END**

**REDEMPTION**

by [](http://swordofmymouth.livejournal.com/profile)[**swordofmymouth**](http://swordofmymouth.livejournal.com/) and [](http://zatnikatel.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://zatnikatel.livejournal.com/)**zatnikatel**  
**Read the Director’s Cut Epilogue** **[here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/536292)**  


**THANKS TO ALL OF YOU WHO HAVE HUNG IN THERE, ESPECIALLY THOSE WHO HAVE COMMENTED REGULARLY, AND TO ALL OUR WONDERFUL READERS ON TUMBLR FOR YOUR DEDICATED, ONGOING SUPPORT OF THIS PROJECT – WE REALLY COULDN'T HAVE SEEN THIS THROUGH TO THE END WITHOUT YOUR ENCOURAGEMENT…**


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